


Episode IV: A New Oath

by imkerfuffled



Series: Star Wizards [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-05-11 00:25:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 37,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5606683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imkerfuffled/pseuds/imkerfuffled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a period of civil war. Wellakh, a wealthy Inner Rim planet, has long been suspected of financing the Rebel Alliance in its fight to overthrow the Galactic Empire. When an emergency meeting of the Senate is convened, Imperial ships attack the planet’s convoy and capture Prince Roshaun and the king’s Advisor. The king and queen manage to escape and flee home.</p><p>Frustrated by their reluctance to take action, the royal family’s adoptive daughter, Dairine, steals a Rebel X-Wing fighter for a one-woman rescue mission. In the process, she uncovers secret plans for the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the Starsnuffer, an armored space station with enough power to destroy entire planets...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. History of the Jedi Order: the Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Because there is a startling lack of actual Jedi!Dairine stories on this site.
> 
> I'm finally giving in and posting this thing that's been rattling around in my brain for the past few weeks. No guarantees that I'll ever finish this, though there's a minimum of... three more chapters that I've already written.

On an Imperial starship floating half a parsec from the nearest inhabited system, a figure paced in shadow, covered from head to foot in black armor. With each step the figure took, its billowing black cloak swished across the floor. Even its face was concealed by a menacing black mask.

At the opposite end of the dimly lit room from the black-clad figure, four stormtroopers stood guarding a hostage. This person wore the gold, gem-encrusted robes associated with the royal family of the Thahit star system. He stood tall and defiant in the face of his captors. His eyes were hard and fixed on the figure in black, and his mouth was set in a grim line behind his mustache.

No sound pierced the silence save the figure’s rhythmic, artificial breathing as air filtered through its mask.

“Do not bother trying to use the Force against me,” the figure finally said, continuing its pacing. The mask warped its voice into something as artificial as its oxygen intake. “Those cuffs are designed to dampen your powers. I can feel your pitiful attempts to break free from here.”

The prisoner gave no visible reaction, but the knuckles of his clenched fists—restrained by a pair of thick metal shackles around his wrists—turned an imperceptible shade whiter.

The figure froze in its pacing and spun on its heel to face the prisoner. “Is that… anger I sense?” it said in a soft, deadly voice, “Hardly befitting a Jedi knight of your age and authority.”

“There _are_ no Jedi knights, thanks to you,” the prisoner spat, his words dripping in vitriol.

The figure chuckled, a sound more ominous than any words it could speak, and took a step closer to the prisoner. “And to think I actually believed that for so long. But no, even after all these years I still recognized your signature in the Force the second I stepped aboard that ship. I only wanted the Rebel prince, but you… you’re a greater prize by far.” The figure took another step forward, and its voice took on a distinctly gloating tone. “The last of the Jedi… Tell me, how does it feel to be the Fallen ones for once?”

“Bet it feels better than being the ageless god stuck in a prepubescent goth phase. The black’s a bit overd—” Before he could finish, the figure’s hand shot out and, though at least a foot of space separated them, the prisoner began to choke. He clutched at his throat, gasping for breath, and for the first time fear shone in his eyes.

“You _dare_ mock me,” the figure growled, “Clearly your insolence never faded with age.”

“Oh, my insolence?” gasped the prisoner, “Is that why they put me on the Council? Or the king’s Advisory board? Or how we defeated you time and again?”

The figure sneered at him. “Are you still laboring under the delusion that you were ever any more than a mild annoyance to me? I _destroyed_ your kind with ease. I killed everyone you knew and cared about: your friends, your mentors, your partner. The fact that you slipped through my fingers then was mere luck.”

“Sounds more… like a coincidence to me,” the prisoner choked out, his voice growing weaker with every word, “You know… what they say… about—” The figure’s grip tightened, cutting him off mid-sentence… And then it disappeared entirely. Immediately, the prisoner collapsed to the floor taking huge, heaving breaths, too relieved by the sudden lack of pressure around his throat to care about what might have caused it.

The figure slowly lowered its arm and turned to the door. Somehow, even with the mask obscuring its features, the figure seemed unfocused, or focused on something far beyond this room.

“I sense another,” the figure whispered, as if to itself, “Powerful in the Force, even for such a young age…”

The prisoner raised his head.

“How can this be?” the figure said. Its focus snapped back to the prisoner, who flinched reflexively. "You... You've taken on a Padawan."

The prisoner refused to respond. His face returned to the stony mask he had worn when he was brought in, but now it hid a faint trace of fear.

“You _have,_ ” the figure said, “And she is on this ship. I can feel her.”

“No,” the prisoner hissed.

With an angry nod of its head at the stormtroopers, the figure snapped, “Go. find her and lock her up. I want her alive for questioning later.”

“You stay away from her!” the prisoner croaked while the stormtrooper nearest the door left the room, “Whatever you want from her, take it from me instead. She hasn't done anything wrong. She can't tell you anything you don't already know.”

“So protective,” the figure said, “Aren’t you Jedi forbidden from playing favorites? You’re supposed to love all life equally.”

“I told you, I’m not a Jedi anymore.”

“No, but you’re training one,” the figure took slow steps toward the prisoner, still on his knees where he had fallen. “Are there more like her, or does the new hope for the generation lie in one little girl barely past her Ordeal?”

The prisoner remained silent.

“Don’t lie, now. It increases entropy.” To add extra incentive, the figure casually raised its hand again.

“She’s the only one,” the prisoner whispered, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Then give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill her,” the figure said.

“ _She’s only eleven,”_ the prisoner pleaded softly, though the look on his face betrayed how little he knew that would help.

“That only makes her more dangerous,” the figure said, “You know I have no qualms killing younglings.”

The prisoner glared daggers into the figure’s chrome black mask.

“Does it still haunt you, knowing it was your friend who murdered them all those years ago? Who betrayed the Jedi order?” The figure crouched down to the prisoner's eye level, taunting him, its saccharine smile bleeding into its voice from behind the mask.

“You are many things,” the prisoner hissed, “But you were _never_ any friend of mine.”

“Then who did you see in the temple that day?”

“That was you, Fairest and Fallen, doing what you’ve always done,” said the prisoner, “You, I greet with defiance. But the person you’re using like a puppet to overshadow? _That_ person I would still call a friend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things kick into gear next chapter with a young farm girl from ~~Tatooine~~ Ireland.


	2. The Jedi's Oath: Species-Nonspecific Recension

“Aunt Annie!” Nita shouted, staring out the window at the rolling green vista beyond the house, “The Jawas are here with a new batch of droids!”

“Oh good. See if you can get a deal for me, dear?” her aunt called from somewhere in the kitchen. Nita ran to the door and threw it open, jogging the distance to the big, clunky Hillcrawlers that she had seen from her window.

The Jawas were a strange little species of scavengers, swathed head to toe in mottled greens to camouflage with Ireland’s scenery, and their vehicles were even stranger. They stood nearly two stories tall and looked like giant, three dimensional rhombuses made of rusting metal. The Jawas drove them around the countryside selling scavenged parts and whatever else they found on their travels.

Now, Nita spoke to the Jawas in their trade dialect for a few minutes, specifying what she wanted. They went back inside their Hillcrawlers and reemerged with a line of droids in tow: tall droids, short droids, humanoid and non-humanoid droids. Nita went down the line asking the Jawas what each one did.

“And this one?” she asked, pointing to something that didn’t look like any droid she had ever seen. It was small, about the size of a large book, and thin as well. Its black casing had probably been sleek and shiny once, but long years of use had dulled and scratched it. A stylized image of an apple lay inlaid in the droid’s center with a long crack running through it.

The Jawas glanced among each other, clearly trying to come up with an answer.

 _Figures,_ Nita thought, _they’d try to sell me something they don’t know anything about._ Out loud, she said, “Never mind, I’ll have this one.” The droid she pointed at was a standard humanoid protocol droid with shiny silver plating. “It does translations, right?”

“Yes miss,” the droid said in an electronic voice.

Nita quickly negotiated a price for it, since by now even the Jawas had discovered that she drove a hard bargain and wouldn’t take no for an answer. It had saved her and her aunt a great deal of money over the years. Once she finished paying for it, she motioned for the droid to follow, and with it she made her way through the hills back to her house. No sooner had she gone ten yards, however, when the Jawas started chattering at her to stop. She turned around to see what the problem was.

The thin little black droid had come alive, growing spindly insect-like legs and scuttling after her. The apple in its center glowed softly, though its crack prevented part of the image from illuminating, giving the impression that a bite had been taken from the apple. Nita shooed it back toward the Jawas, but instead it scurried closer to her leg. One Jawa tried to snatch it up, and it jabbed him with one of its legs.

“No, stop it!” Nita kicked it lightly with her foot. “You can’t come with me.” The droid just buzzed at her and darted past her toward the house.

For a good five minutes she and the Jawas tried to get it back into the transport, but all their combined efforts only led to injury and annoyance for everyone involved. Every time one of them got near the droid it stabbed them, and before long they were all fed up with it.

Finally one of the Jawas, the one with the most injuries from the droid, told her, “Just take the damn thing!”

“What am I going to do with it?” Nita asked indignantly, sucking on the spot on her hand where the droid had stabbed her last.

“I don’t care,” the Jawa said, “Just get it out of my hands.”

The Jawas all scrambled back to their transports, leaving Nita alone with her two new droids. She sighed and walked over to the rogue one, with the protocol droid trailing after her, and she crouched down in front of it.

 _Might as well try to be friendly now that I’m stuck with it,_ she thought. _What in the worlds am I going to tell Aunt Annie?_

Nita held out her hand like she would to coax Tualha the cat towards her. The droid stepped back a few tentative steps, and Nita said, “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. Look, the Jawas are leaving now. It’s okay.” She pointed at the receding transports, and the droid grew a couple stalky eyes to watch. “See, you’re safe now. If you follow me I’ll take you to my aunt’s house.” She stood up and began walking again, glancing back every few seconds to make sure both droids were following her.

* * *

 

Thirty minutes later, she had explained the situation to her aunt and left the protocol droid in the house with her, and now Nita sat on her bed in her caravan behind the house, trying to figure out what to do with the little black droid.

“What are you called?” she asked it. The droid lay next to her on the bed with its legs folded up underneath it and a handful of eye stalks surveying the room.

“Spot,” it said, its voice mechanical and buzzy.

“Really?” Nita laughed, “That sounds like a dog’s name.”

The droid made an irritated buzzing sound, and Nita laughed again. The more time she spent with the droid, the more she grew to like it now that it had stopped trying to stab her.

“You seemed pretty anxious to get away from those Jawas, huh?” she said. When Spot didn’t respond, she continued, “I’ll bet it’s not so fun being stuck in their rusty old Hillcrawlers.”

Spot shook a couple of its eye stalks back and forth in a ‘no’ gesture and stayed silent.

“So,” Nita scooted forward on the bed, crossing her legs in a pretzel shape, “What do you do, anyway?”

“Spcfy,” Spot said.

“Sorry?”

“Specify.”

“Oh,” Nita nodded, “I mean, what’s your purpose? What were you made for?”

In reply, Spot split itself open, and for a second Nita thought she had done something wrong, until she realized Spot was hinged to be able to do that. Now, it was opened out into a display screen on the inside of its top half, and a keyboard on the bottom half. On the display a large block of plain text appeared. Nita read it, whispering the words to herself.

“‘ _In Life’s name, and for Life’s sake,_ ’” it began, “‘ _I assert that I will employ the Force which is Its gift in Life’s service alone…_ ’ What is this?” she asked.

“Jedi’s Oath,” Spot said.

Nita did a double take. “Jedi?” It nodded its eye stalks, hesitantly at first, as if unsure whether it was allowed to tell her that. “I thought they were just a myth.” Spot refused to say another word on the subject, so Nita went back to reading the Oath.

“Wow,” she whispered when she was through, “I had no idea they stood for all this. I thought they just guarded the Republic in the old days. According to the stories, at least.”

She kept expecting Spot to say something, but he just sat there for a few seconds more. Then, in a voice that sounded far sneakier than any droid ever should, it said, “Once the Jedi took their Oath, they were required to go on an Ordeal.”

“Oh?” Nita asked, “What does that mean?”

“You have to come with me on your Ordeal now,” it said.

“What? No--why?” Nita cried.

“You took the Oath; now you’re a Jedi. Come on.” In a flurry of motion, Spot leapt off the bed and landed on its feet before scuttling over to the door. “Hurry!”

“No, I didn't--” Nita said again, “You tricked me!”

“Too late. You have to come with me now,” Spot said, bumping up repeatedly against the caravan door, “Once you’re through you can come back here and forget all about it, but now you _have to help me!”_ Its voice edged so close to panic that Nita couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for it.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“No. Time,” Spot threw itself frantically against the door again.

“Okay, okay,” Nita said holding up her hands in surrender, “How long will this take?”

“Depends,” Spot said, “Do you know Swale, Thomas B.?”

“Do you mean Crazy Swale?”

Spot shrugged a pair of its legs, “Worth a try. Take me to him.”

Nita hesitated. She only knew Crazy Swale by his reputation, but even in this area known for its eccentricity people avoided him. The man willingly lived with the Sidhe, which was enough to make anyone crazy in Nita’s books. On the few occasions she’d gone with her aunt on her dealings with them, Nita had always left with a prickling feeling on the back of her neck.

“Now!” Spot said.

“You need to learn some manners,” Nita muttered, but she hopped off the bed anyway and opened the door. Spot dashed outside immediately, then turned around to wait for her to show it the way, bobbing up and down impatiently. The droid’s anxiety was infectious, and Nita found herself checking her back every few steps she took, afraid someone might be following her.

Night had fallen while she’d been in the caravan, but she navigated her way through the hills by memory. Within another half hour she made it to a small cave opening in the base of Sugarloaf Mountain, where the Sidhe lived.

“He’s in here somewhere,” she told Spot, gesturing for it to follow her inside.

It did so with none of the hesitation Nita showed.


	3. Rankings and Classifications: Jedi Master

They travelled through the tunnel for what felt like hours and mere minutes simultaneously, until even Spot seemed unsure of itself. The further they ventured into the hill, the more solid their surroundings appeared, though by all logic they shouldn’t have been able to see anything this far underground. This was when Nita always wished she could turn back when she came with Aunt Annie, but now she forged on, determined not to let the way this place played with her senses get to her head, if only to prove herself braver than she felt.

Finally, they emerged on the fringes of a massive city carved right into the very heart of the mountain, full of delicate spindly structures sweeping high above Nita’s head and flying buttresses that couldn’t possibly support the weight of the stone crushing down on them but somehow did. The entire place shone with that impossible light that Nita had seen in the tunnel. And the people, traveling along paved roads on the ground or thin walkways high in the air, _looked_ like regular humans, if a little taller than this planet’s average, but they _felt_ more alien than some of the people Nita had met at the market. She scooped Spot into her arms, more for her sake than its, and forced herself to stand taller.

Near the tunnel opening, a guard stood at attention, and when Nita and Spot exited the tunnel he blocked their path with a sharp spear.

“State your purpose here," he ordered.

Nita tried not to let her voice waver when she replied, “I am Nita Callahan, niece of Annie Callahan, and I seek Thomas Swale on urgent business.”

The guard narrowed his eyes at her, then raised his spear. “Follow me,” he said.

Nita had to break into a jog to keep up with his long legs as they made their way through the city, past building after building and supporting pillar after pillar. She clutched Spot tight to her chest for security. Eventually, they reached one dwelling carved into the side of the mountain, and the guard rapped on the wall next to the open doorway.

“Yes, yes, I’m coming,” a voice called from inside the house. The sound of footsteps echoed off the stone, and a man appeared in the doorway. Whatever Nita had expected of Crazy Swale, this was not it. He couldn’t be a day over forty, with gray peppering his dark hair, and he wore a typical white tunic common among many systems. If not for the strange, unnatural light affecting his features, he would look like any other person back home.

The man regarded Nita with a confused expression, but when his gaze fell on Spot his eyes widened in recognition. “You may leave now,” he said to the guard, and to Nita he motioned her inside.

She allowed herself a second to take in the surprisingly spacious interior and the intricate designs that covered every surface of this city, before she held out Spot and said, “This droid wanted to see you.”

Swale nodded absently as he took it from her, tracing the crack running along its case and _tsk_ ing softly at it under his breath. “How did you come across this?” he asked Nita, “It belongs out in the Thahit system.”

Nita shrugged. “It followed me home from a Jawa transport. Sorry, I don’t know how it got here, Mr. Swale.”

“Call me Tom,” he said, still staring at the Spot with an unreadable look on his face.

“Alright,” Nita continued, “It really wanted to find you. Even tricked me into taking this Oath thing.”

At that, Tom’s head snapped up. “The Jedi's--? Shame on you!” he scolded Spot, “You can’t go giving that out like that.”

Spot said something in a series of beeps and whistles that seemed to make sense to Tom, though Nita could only gape at them. “That doesn’t matter. You’re compromising the integrity of the Oath. You of all people should know better than that!” Tom said.

“Wait, what are you talking about?” Nita cried, “What do you know about the Jedi?”

Tom sighed and ran a hand through his hair, “This is not an ideal way for you to find out about this, but—” Spot buzzed impatiently in his hands. “I’m afraid it’ll have to wait. Yes, what is it? I’m assuming it’s a message from Carl?” The last part he addressed to Spot, and now his expression was clearly one of worry.

Spot shook a few of its eye stalks. “Dairine ke Nelaid am Seriv… det Wellakhit.” Before Tom could say anything in reply, it shot a holographic image into the air above it, and Tom quickly set it down on a nearby table to stabilize it, looking more and more concerned by the second.

The hologram was of a young girl, maybe a few years younger than Nita, although with extraterrestrial humanoids age could be hard to tell. She had bright orange hair and a fierce looking face, and her robes were of a fine golden fabric studded with more gems than Nita had seen in her entire life. But the most remarkable thing about her was her expression: one of terrible fear, but also anger, and shame, and burning resentment all boiled into one.

She began to speak in a hushed, hurried whisper, always glancing over her shoulder for some unseen threat. “I’m Dairine ke—screw it, Carl said if I’m ever in trouble to ask you for help, and _dammit_ I’m in trouble!” The admission sounded like it was painful to make. “Ro—the prince and Carl have both been captured by Imperial stormtroopers, and they’re being held on a destroyer in the Outer Rim, and I was _stupid_ and I tried to rescue them on my own, and _shit_ Nelaid’s going to kill me!” Here she paused a second to calm down, and Tom made a concerned hissing noise with his teeth. “Anyway, the important part is that while I was on here I managed to steal some intel that I’ve programmed into Spot here.”

Tom’s brow furrowed further in confusion instead of greater concern. “Spot?”

“That’s what the droid said its name was,” Nita said.

The recording continued. “I’m going to send Spot in an escape pod and just hope it’s got enough power to make it to Ireland, but whatever happens to us, that information has to get to the Rebellion. They’re plans for—kriff!” The sound of blaster fire drowned out anything else she might have said, and the recording flickered and ended with the girl reaching inside her outer robe to draw a weapon.

For a few seconds afterward no one said a word, and Spot sat still on the table, vibrating slightly. Nita stared at the space above it, where just moments before the red-haired girl had given her plea. Something about her felt familiar somehow, like a face she had seen in a dream.

“This is worse than I thought,” Tom said, his voice low and grave. He stood with his arms crossed next to the table, staring at the same spot Nita was with a look of deep deliberation on his face. “If it was just Carl in danger that would be one thing, but Dairine and the prince… and these plans…” Suddenly, he leapt into motion, ducking into a side room and emerging with an old, fraying shoulder bag and a tattered brown cloak, which he slung over his shoulders. “I need to go to Wellakh,” he announced, “You can come as well, if you like, though I warn you it’ll probably be dangerous.”

At the same time, Nita finally blurted out all the questions that had been building up inside her since she arrived. “Who were those people? Are you with the Rebellion? Who _are_ you? What’s with all this Jedi stuff? How do you know Spot? Wait—” she blinked, “What do you mean, I can come with you?”

“If you like,” Tom repeated, tying a belt around his waist. Then he paused to look Nita in the eye and sighed. “You'd need permission from aunt, of course, but... There’s a lot you need to know, Nita, and unfortunately there isn’t time to explain it all to you right now, but it can’t be a coincidence that _you_ found this droid and brought it here. I won’t force you to do anything, but you’re involved in this now, ever since you took the Oath. I think you should come.”

“I can’t…” Nita began. The idea of going off and actually _doing_ something, of being a part of something far greater than anything she could ever experience on this tiny little planet… It filled her chest with a sudden fierce fluttering. But on the other hand, “I can’t leave my aunt here,” she sighed, surprising herself by how disappointed it made her. “It’s hard enough for her to find workers for the farm, and without me that’s one more person she’ll have to pay.”

Tom nodded, feeling around for something in his bag. “Nevertheless, you’ll need to be taught the ways of the Force if you want to pass your Ordeal—”

“Spot said this was my Ordeal,” Nita interrupted.

“What, finding me?” Tom glared at Spot, and the droid scuttled backward a few steps in shame, “I’m afraid not. Once I get back from Wellakh I can prepare you for your actual Ordeal, but until then…” He pulled something from his bag and handed it to Nita, “You’ll need this.”

Nita ran the object through her hands. It was roughly cylindrical and made of a shiny, silver metal with black stripes of plastic or rubber on one end to provide a grip. Just above the stripes was a sliding switch, which Tom gestured for her to push. In a flash, a long blade of pure blue light and energy shot out the end of the cylinder. Nita stared in awe at it as she swished it experimentally through the air.

“It’s called a lightsaber,” Tom said, “Creative name, I know. It was the traditional weapon of the Jedi before they were wiped out over a decade ago.”

“How did you get it?” Nita asked, still watching the blade.

“I used to be one.” Nita tore her eyes away from the lightsaber. “There’s more to the story that that, of course, but for now you need to get back home, and I need to find a pilot who’ll fly me to the Thahit system.”

Nita nodded and sheathed the lightsaber blade, “My aunt probably knows someone in the city with a ship.”

“Good, that’ll save me some time. Could you take me there?”

Their journey back through the tunnels seemed to pass much faster than Nita’s original one. All the while Nita asked Tom question after question about the Jedi and how they operated and, as she warmed up to the idea, what it meant for her now that she’d taken the Oath. The sound of Spot’s feet clacking along the ground provided a backdrop to their conversation.

Before long, they emerged blinking into the early morning light. Nita squinted up at the sun and used a hand to shield her eyes, surprised to see it at all. “I wasn’t in there _that_ long, was I?”

“Time passes differently in Sugarloaf. When it passes at all,” Tom said, though if he meant that to be reassuring it didn’t work. Nita spent the rest of the trip in silence, worrying about what her aunt would say when she got home. She had never been one to sneak out late at night or stay out past dawn (that one time with Ronan didn’t count), and she couldn’t even imagine how Aunt Annie would react to this.

“Wait!” Tom suddenly hissed, snapping her out of her thoughts. She had been about to climb the crest of the last hill before reaching her aunt’s house, but now Tom motioned for her to stay low. They both peered over the top of the hill, and Spot poked a few eye stalks over the ridge as well.

Down below, standing out in stark contrast to the greenery surrounding them, was a group of about eight Imperial stormtroopers in their white armor. They stood at the door of Nita’s house talking with Aunt Annie and the new protocol droid. Nita’s blood froze to ice.

“They probably found Spot’s escape pod and followed the trail,” Tom whispered.

“What are they saying?” Nita said, not caring at the moment _how_ they came here, only whether or not her aunt would be alright.

“Listen,” Tom told her, “There’s a Force that runs through everything. Try to tap into that, and it'll help you hear them.”

“I don’t know _how_  to do that _,”_ Nita said.

“Fair enough. Spot, enhanced audio?” No sooner did he say it before tinny voices began playing from the droid’s speakers, syncing up perfectly with their owners’ motions.

“… _looks like a flat, black rectangle?”_ one of the stormtroopers was saying.

“ _I—”_ Aunt Annie began to say, but the protocol droid cut her off.

“ _Yes, I have seen it,”_ the droid said. Even from this distance Nita could see the murderous look her aunt gave the droid. “ _It was another of young Miss Callahan’s purchases from the Jawas.”_

“ _But it ran off,”_ Aunt Annie cut in, “ _I don’t know where it is now. Sorry, I can’t help you. Have a nice day.”_

“ _I know where it is,”_ the droid said, no doubt trying to be helpful, _“It went with Miss Callahan into the hills.”_

“Crap,” Nita muttered.

 _“Can you tell us what direction they went?”_ the stormtrooper asked.

Nita ducked below the ridge with Tom, her heart racing in her chest. From the house, the droid said, _"That way, toward the mountain.”_

“Run,” Tom said.


	4. The Force: Methods of Suppression

Three stormtroopers dragged Dairine down hallway after hallway, each one sterile and identical, seemingly built to disorient their occupants. Even with her excellent memory Dairine wouldn’t be able to find her way back to her ship no matter how hard she tried. She had stopped struggling against her captors by now, knowing that resisting their hold on her would only lead to more pain on her part. Besides, with the Force-dampeners binding her hands and all her weapons confiscated, her only defense against the (supposedly) best trained soldiers in the galaxy was her knowledge of hand-to-hand combat, which she had let slide ever since Carl started training her with a lightsaber. She mentally cursed herself for not taking his advice and keeping up her other forms of training.

Her captors led her past a floor-to-ceiling viewport, and she silently rearranged what she could of her mental map of the starship to place their current location near its side. Craning her neck, she managed to catch the briefest glimpse of a tiny, fast-moving white speck far off in space, easily mistaken for a star at this distance. Dairine had to suppress a small grin, for she knew it for what it really was: a jettisoned escape pod holding her stolen Imerial plans.

Before long they reached a corridor lined with heavily fortified cell doors and four more guards. Dairine’s stormtroopers conferred quietly with one of them for a moment, and the guard typed in a passcode on a wall panel. The nearest door slid open, and Dairine was shoved forcefully into the cell. She had only a spit second to shoot the stormtroopers a deadly glare before the door shut again with a hydraulic hiss. Dairine surveyed her surroundings with disgust. Her cell was completely bare—gray metal walls and gray metal floor—only a wide shelf sticking out of the far wall at waist height broke the monotony, which she guessed was supposed to serve as a bed.

She waited until the sound of heavy footsteps faded away entirely before she broke down, screaming, beating her fists against the wall as she cursed herself for her rash stupidity in coming here.

It took five minutes of shouting herself hoarse for her to realize not all the thumps against the wall came from her feet or fists. She silenced herself immediately, listening hard for the sounds of someone else on the other side of the wall.

“Dairine?” a voice said, “Dair, is that you? Are you alright?”

Instantly the rage drained from her body, and as a heavy weight descended on her shoulders to replace it she leaned her forehead against the cool metal of the wall. “Ro?” she croaked.

“Yes,” he said, a note of panic in his voice, “What’s the matter? How did you get here? _Why_?”

As quickly as her anger dissipated, Dairine’s shame returned as prickling heat in the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over. When she spoke it was with a great effort to keep her voice steady and glib. “Rescuing you, of course.”

For several seconds, Roshaun didn’t respond, and Dairine could picture all too well how he stared openmouthed at the wall, unable to decide between incredulity and anger. She counted down the seconds until he boiled over.

“What were you _thinking?_ You could have—now _you_ —” he cut himself off before he said something he would regret. “You should have left that to the... the others.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Dairine snapped, her own anger flaring up again, “They wouldn’t stop talking about hostage negotiations and diplomatic convoys, and _nobody was actually doing anything,_ and I couldn’t just stand by and watch while you and Carl—” She cut off the sentence with an embarrassing squeak while she tried to regain control of her emotions. But the only methods that had ever worked for her were the ones Carl taught her as part of her training.

“Well, at least with you here,” Roshaun said to break the silence. His voice sounded flat and distant, “It is guaranteed that my father will send a rescue mission.”

“Will you cut it out with the ‘Daddy doesn’t love me’ shit?” Dairine snapped, falling back on her familiar, ever-present irritation to fight the tears that welled up again behind her eyelids. Then, more quietly, she said, “I’ve never seen them so worried before. Even after I got back from Ordeal… I think Miril almost wanted to screw politics and start a rescue party herself.” She sniffed and squeezed her eyes shut, and when she spoke again her voice was barely a whisper. “I can’t lose you and Carl too, Ro.”

If Roshaun heard her, he didn’t respond. Dairine wanted to tell him everything; about stealing the X-Wing from right under the king and queen’s noses; about finding the Star Destroyer and sneaking aboard by disguising herself as a TIE fighter using only the Force; about downloading the entire contents of the ship’s database and discovering the Empire’s secret starbase; about sending Spot with the information back to the Rebels… But she couldn’t say anything. If she and Roshaun could hear each other through the walls, she had to assume the stormtroopers standing outside could hear them as well.

“Where’s Carl?” she asked eventually.

“He was in the cell across from me,” Roshaun said, sounding grateful for the excuse to talk again, “But a group of stormtroopers took him away about half an hour ago, and I do not know where they went.”

“Oh no,” Dairing felt her heart drop to somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach, “You don’t think…?”

“I… I am sure he is alright. Most likely.”

“How about you _don’t_ try to be reassuring, alright?”

“Yes, that sounds like an excellent idea.”

* * *

Less than one hundred yards away and two floors below them, a caped figure ordered Carl Romeo, former Jedi Master and current Advisor to the Wellakhit throne, to be taken to the torture chambers for a thorough investigation into his planet’s involvement in the Rebel Alliance.

Despite the Imperial Army’s best efforts to break him, Carl refused to breathe a word in betrayal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ridiculously short chapter this time, but I promise the next one will be longer.


	5. Ethics of the Force: Use and Abuse

Nita and Tom crept around the thatched buildings of Bray, paying careful attention to the various humans and aliens traversing the streets with them. Every so often they would cross paths with pairs of stormtroopers who stopped people seemingly at random, searching them for Nita and Spot.

Tom had given Nita his hooded cloak to hide her face, and she drew it tighter around her shoulders as they passed another pair of stormtroopers interrogating a human woman of approximately Nita’s own appearance. Each time she and Tom came within sight of the Imperial troops, Nita felt as if her heart would beat right out of her chest in betrayal, or the stormtroopers would use some form of x-ray vision to find Spot tucked away inside Tom’s bag, or…

She forced herself to stop imagining worst case scenarios before she hyperventilated and made them come true.

“Are you sure we’re safe?” Nita whispered, trying not to glance around suspiciously.

“I’m as sure as I can be,” Tom answered, which did nothing to reassure her. She noticed his hand never strayed far from an outer pouch on his bag, where she could see the vague outline of another lightsaber hilt. “I’ve placed a selective visibility field around Spot, so even if we do get caught there’s a chance the droid can escape,” he continued.

“How does that work?” Nita asked.

“People can still see the droid, but the field tricks their brains into thinking it’s unimportant. That way it doesn’t register as a threat to them,” he explained.

They fell silent as they neared another pair of stormtroopers, and Tom directed a polite nod at them. Nita could feel their gazes boring a hole through her hood, but just when she was convinced they would stop the two of them, the stormtroopers waved them past.

Once they were sufficiently out of earshot, she whispered, “Was that another Jedi mind trick?”

“No, simply a misdirection,” Tom shook his head, “And what I did with Spot wasn’t either, in a way. You’re thinking of psychotropic applications of the Force, where you affect a person’s thoughts and actions directly. The visibility shield merely affects the space around it, and their minds do all the rest. It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one if you’re to become a Jedi.”

Nita nodded, still on the lookout for more stormtroopers as they walked down the street. “Why though? What happens if you don’t make that distinction?”

“Well…” Tom paused for a second and gave a short, rueful laugh, “It’s been so long since I’ve had to give this sort of speech, I’ve nearly forgotten how… Jedi have always adhered to a strict moral code, outlined in the Oath you took. It explicitly states we can’t ‘change any creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened.’ That includes using the Force to alter their minds, no matter the reason.”

For the first time, Nita found herself considering what she’d read on Spot’s screen seriously, trying to recall every word in that Oath and finding that she couldn’t. At the time, it had only been a mild curiosity, not something she might one day have to live by. But the way Tom was talking about it… that was a level of obligation she had never imagined herself having, and without warning it felt like someone had replaced her lungs with a pair of bellows and squeezed all the air out of them.

Tom continued talking, focusing on the people around them and not on Nita. “Everyone is tempted at times to disregard the Oath and to justify our actions as being in the service of Life regardless. Even the most well-intentioned people have been known to slip up.” He gave a deep sigh, and if Nita had been less preoccupied with trying to wipe her eyes unnoticed, she might have seen the sadness in his expression as he gazed off into the distance. “When that happens too often, Jedi can be converted to the Dark Side of the Force, sometimes without becoming aware of it themselves until it’s too late. Cases like that almost always end up overshadowed by the Lone Power… I told you about That One, didn’t I? Nita?”

He turned to look at her finally, immediately seeing through her feeble attempts to hide her puffy red eyes on the verge of tears. “Nita, what’s wrong?” he said gently.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” she squeaked, hunching her shoulders even further forward, “I never thought this Oath thing was a big deal; I thought I was just reading something out loud to myself, like I do sometimes, and now I’m stuck with it, and I never asked for any of this, and… and…” And now she really was hyperventilating, right there in the middle of the street for everyone to see.

Tom crouched down in front of her and took her by the shoulders, glancing around at the people staring as they passed by. “Oh, Nita,” he whispered, “You’re right, you were thrown into an unfair situation, and Spot had no right to give you the Oath the way it did. But you are _not_ stuck with this.”

Nita glanced up to meet his eyes, sniffling.

“Just because you took the Oath doesn’t mean you have to abide by it,” Tom began.

“But you said…”

“I know, but your situation is different. There’s a saying among the Jedi… or, there was: ‘the Force only lends its power to those willing to wield it,’” he said, “If you don’t think this life is for you, you can give it all up, and in time you’ll forget all about it. No one will think any less of you, Nita.”

She nodded, feeling a burning heat building in her cheeks. Here she was, blubbering out in the open to a man she hardly knew, who not even a day earlier she had thought was insane. And now, when it was most important that she stay strong, her _whining_ could have killed them both if any stormtroopers had seen them and grown suspicious. It still could, if she couldn’t pull herself together soon.

“Are you okay?” Tom asked.

She blinked her eyes furiously for a second and nodded. “Yeah, I’m good. Let’s go.”

Tom stood up again with a faint groan, and they began walking again, ignoring any strange looks from onlookers. The stormtroopers didn’t seem to have reached this street yet, which Nita was enormously grateful for.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about what Tom had said.

“I _can’t_ give it up though, can I?” she said, surprised to find her voice didn’t waver in the slightest, “Not now, after what’s happened.”

Tom hesitated before replying. “You always have a choice.”

“I can’t stay here, or it’ll put my aunt in even more danger,” Nita said, “So if I’m going with you, I want to be able to defend myself. And I can’t think of any better way to do that than with a massive energy field that binds the entire universe together.”

“Spoken like a true Jedi,” Tom chuckled, “That sounds like something Carl would say.”

“Yeah, who _is_ Carl? And that Dairine ke whatshername?” Nita asked, feeling considerably less small now from the simple act of making a decision, “You never explained who they were.”

“How about we save that for later, when we’re someplace less likely to be overheard by Imperial spies,” Tom said. A passing saurian gave him an incredulous look, and he threw it a quick, joking smile. “Right, let’s get inside now; we’re here,” he muttered, quickly guiding Nita to a building a few yards ahead of them. She couldn’t decide whether to giggle nervously or stick with her previous terror, until she got a good look at the place and settled on the latter.

It had to be the most run-down, ancient-looking pub she had ever seen, even taking into consideration her planet’s reputation for run-down, ancient-looking pubs. The wooden exterior looked half rotted through, and the peeling paint above the door that read “Long Hall” might once have been green, though now it more closely resembled a murky brown.

Inside, it was even worse. The smell of beer and old vomit hit her even before the dim lighting did, filtering through a haze of pipe smoke. Aliens of every size, build, and color sat or draped themselves over the chairs and tables, chatting and guffawing and nearly drowning out the tinny Celtic band playing in the corner.

Nita had never set foot in anyplace like this, nor had she ever visited this part of town in years, but Tom strode straight up to the bar like he owned the place and tapped on the counter, ignoring the bartender serving a group at the other end. Two pointed ears poked up from over the counter, and Nita watched in shock as Tualha, a small black kitten who often roamed the village, hopped onto the scratched wood. She blinked lazily at Nita and Tom.

“Oh great,” she drawled, opening her mouth wide in a yawn, “I’m just drowning in midi-clorians today. You don’t happen to have anything to do with the mess outside, I suppose?”

“Hunt’s luck to you too, bard,” Tom said, “I’m looking for safe passage to the Thahit system, and as I recall, _you_ claim to know where to find that sort of thing.”

“So it _is_ your fault those Imperial maggots are crawling all over the place,” Tualha flattened her ears back, “What’s in it for me if I help you escape?”

“The satisfaction of putting one over ‘those Imperial maggots,’” Tom suggested mildly.

The cat flicked her tail irritably and seemed to deliberate on the offer. “Fine,” she said eventually, pointing with her nose to a table in the corner, “Guy over there, he’s got a ship. He'll get you where you need fast, no questions asked.”

“Thank you,” Tom said. He turned to head in the direction she pointed, and Nita followed.

“Good luck with your new Padawan,” Tualha called after them.


	6. Orders of Being: Abdals / "Pillars"

Far out in the vast reaches of the Outer Rim, a mere half-parsec beyond the planet Ireland, a sea of ice and rocks drifted lazily through the vacuum, trailing dust and ion trails behind it. The scene would could almost be called serene if it weren't for the massive Imperial Star Destroyer lurking nearly motionless in its midst.

In an interior conference room tucked away inside one of the ship's lower decks, the atmosphere was anything but serene. The air practically sizzled with repressed irritation, and the stormtroopers standing guard around the room shifted uncomfortably every few seconds as the various military officers sitting around the central table began their discussions. A black-clad, masked figure sat at the head of the table.

“Lord Vader, sir,” one commander said, addressing the figure, “My men are following promising leads on the droid’s location. It’s been reported to be with a local on the planet Ireland, in the nearby Sol system.”

A low hum emanated from the figure’s mask, a dissatisfied noise that caused sweat to start beading on the commander’s skin. “But you haven’t actually _recovered_ the droid, have you?” the figure said.

“N-no, sir. Not yet,” the commander said, “But I’m confident my men will find it soon.”

Vader gave the same deep rumble in his throat, but otherwise did nothing.

“Do you have _any_ idea how dangerous that droid is?” interjected a general, leaning around the officer to her left to confront the commander.

“Of course I do! I’m not an idiot,” the commander said.

“That Wellakhit girl managed to bypass _every_ _one_ of our firewalls and download our entire database onto it,” the general began, but she was loudly interrupted by an admiral sitting across the table from her.

“Now, that’s what I find hard to believe,” he said, “No droid can store that much data in its own memory banks; it’d fry itself.”

“That’s what I thought as well, until I saw the report,” the general admitted, “But I’m more worried about how the princess sliced her way through one of the best cyber security systems in the galaxy in less than ten minutes.”

“Obviously, she had help,” said the admiral, “The Rebels must have planned for months to do this.”

“What, so they send in an heir to the throne to get the job done? I don’t think so,” the general argued.

At that point, the commander cut in again, “She had a Jedi lightsaber on her when we apprehended her. There’s a long history of Force-sensitive people acting as one- or two-man special ops teams in the past.”

“Yes, _in the past!_ There aren’t any Jedi anymore who could do that, and she’s not old enough to have any training from before the Great Purge,” the general said, smacking her palm against the table and glaring at the two men who argued with her.

“You’re wrong.”

Everyone around the table fell silent and turned to look at Darth Vader, whose deep bass voice would stand out against the others’ tenors and alto even without his characteristic rasping breath. For the entirety of his subordinate’s dispute he had remained unmoving, but now he spoke up.

“You are all wrong,” he repeated, certain he had everyone’s attention now, “I have just come from interrogating one of the prisoners, the Sunlord’s Advisor and the girl’s Master in the Force.” He looked pointedly at the general. “She is indeed a Jedi, and an extremely powerful one at that, which I would think even those as blind to the Force as you would be able to sense. What she is _not_ is a princess. Wellakhit law states that, while anyone can be appointed as secondary or tertiary heir to the throne, only those of blood relation to the current ruling family have royal titles.

“And as for your Rebel conspiracy, there is no such thing,” he continued, “When I questioned him, her Master clearly didn’t anticipate her coming, and the guards from the detention corridor reported that the prince was equally as shocked. Most likely, the girl intended this to be a simple rescue mission, and she seized upon the opportunity for intelligence-gathering as it arose. It is simply… a coincidence that she has the one droid in the galaxy that _is_ capable of downloading so much data.” Vader paused when the admiral let out a poorly-suppressed snicker. “Do you find this _funny?”_

“No, of course not,” the admiral hastily insisted, “It’s just… Why are we so worried about someone who’s stupid enough to think she could get past an entire ship filled with our soldiers without getting caught?”

“ _Never_ underestimate the power of the Force in the hands of one trained in its use,” Vader growled, his voice even lower and more gravelly than before, “You have no idea how dangerous Dairine ke Nelaid truly is to the Empire. If her droid reaches the Rebels, the war will be over. They’ll have access to all of our records: the size of our fleet, our army, our weapons. They’ll know all our strategies and our troop movements. They’ll know where to strike us at our weakest points, and they will _crush_ the Empire within a few years.”

As he spoke, the admiral slowly hunched his shoulders and lowered his gaze, almost curling in on himself under the force of Vader’s glare. For a long minute nobody spoke.

“Commander Tagge, redouble your efforts to retrieve the droid. Destroy it if necessary,” Vader ordered the commander, then addressed the entire table again, “Meanwhile, we must prepare for the possibility of failure on his part…” He trailed off for a second, letting the implied threat hang in the air, “We can stop at nothing to ensure the droid doesn’t fall into enemy hands. If it can’t be found in another day, I am ordering the planet’s annihilation.”

“But, my lord,” the general said, “Ireland is still neutral in the war. The Senate will never allow—”

“That is no longer an issue,” Vader declared, “The Empress convened this latest Senate session to announce its dissolution. As of ten minutes ago, the Senate is no more.”

Everyone stared in silent shock as they processed Vader’s announcement, stated with only a hint of the gravitas it warranted. Finally, a previously quiet officer asked the one question they all were thinking, “How will the Empire keep from falling into disarray without the Senate to keep the planets in line?”

And the general asked, “How did you find that out so quickly, if you’ve been here the whole time?”

“On those planets that don’t already have a permanent Imperial force stationed there, the regional Moffs will take charge for now, to ease the transition to a more direct dictatorship,” Vader explained. “And in answer to your question,” he turned to the general, “I was there in the Senate when the Empress made her statement. I _am_ there in the Senate still. When one becomes as proficient in the Force as I have, it is a simple task to exist in multiple areas of space at once.”

A few officers exchanged nervous or incredulous glances, depending on their openness to superstition, but the general nodded thoughtfully. “There was a kid on my home planet who could do a trick like that. ‘Bilocation,’ he called it,” she said, “People said he was an abdal.”

Darth Vader went completely still, staring at the general with his mask’s inhuman eyes as the seconds stretched on. Around the room, everyone else grew still as well, unsure what was going on or how they were supposed to react. The general drew back in her seat and met her superior’s gaze with an expression of wariness and faint confusion.

“What is your name, General?” Vader spoke so softly that if the room hadn’t been deathly silent to begin with, she would have had to strain to hear him.

“Esprit, my lord,” she said.

“And what do you know of abdals, General Esprit?”

“Mainly just that they’re rare, and they can bilocate,” she said, a noticeable tremor in her voice.

“Anything else?”

“No, my lord.” By now she was visibly trembling. “The abdal from my planet died when I was only a child.”

Darth Vader raised his gloved fist, and everyone around the table knew what was going to happen long before the general began clutching at her throat, fighting for her last gasps of breath.

“General Esprit’s ignorance on this subject has cost her her life,” Vader raised his voice to speak to the gathering at large, “She only knew one fact of any importance about abdals: they never survive being told the truth about themselves.”

He stood up, and everyone stiffened in fear, while Esprit could only grasp feebly at the nonexistent fingers around her neck. But Vader ignored everyone else, instead striding around the table to stand behind her chair. Those seated nearby tried to scoot surreptitiously away.

“Unfortunately for you, traitor,” he snarled, leaning over so his mask filled up Esprit’s entire field of vision, “I am as far from an abdal as it is possible to get.”

The last thing she saw was the dark, glittering chrome of Darth Vader's mask before the life drained from her eyes.


	7. Negotiations

The sole inhabitant of the booth Tualha had directed them to was a young boy about Nita’s age sipping a creamy, blue colored drink from a mug. He had short, spiky hair and skin too dark to be native Irish, and he looked up when Tom and Nita slid into the booth across from him.

Tom introduced themselves without last names, pointing at each of them in turn as he did so. “We’ve been told you can get us to the Thahit system without attracting any, shall we say ‘unwanted attention.’” He said, glancing significantly toward the door where the blurry outline of a stormtrooper could now be seen through the grimy window.

The boy nodded and slurped through his straw for a second more. “That depends on how much you’re willing to pay. Thahit's in the Inner Rim. It's not cheap to get there,” he said eventually. His voice had the faintest trace of an accent to it, though Nita couldn’t locate where it was from.

“Of course,” Tom nodded, “The Advisor to the Sunlord of Wellakh is a personal friend of mine, so I’m sure we can work something out to your satisfaction when we get there.”

“Sure, and my girlfriend’s a princess of Mars,” the boy said with a look of bored skepticism, “I’m gonna need at least a down payment if I’m even going to consider hiring out to you.”

“I can give you two thousand credits today, and another thirteen at the end of the flight,” Tom said, “If we choose to hire you, of course.”

The boy regarded him and Nita closely for a little longer, and despite herself, Nita's skin squirmed slightly under his intense gaze. She knew the game he and Tom were playing; it was one she had engaged in herself on many occasions. Each party would pretend to be on the fence about taking the other one’s offer in order to manipulate the price in their own favor. It could go on for quite a while, she had found, and they didn’t have the time to spare.

“Look,” she said suddenly, drawing both men’s attention. She glanced quickly at Tom to make sure she hadn’t crossed a line, and he nodded almost imperceptibly for her to continue. “We need to get to Wellakh, and we need to get there _now_. I’m sure there’s a dozen other pilots in this city alone who’ll do the job, so you’d better decide real quick whether you’ll accept the deal or not.”

The boy stared at her, his mouth almost hanging open at her sudden assertiveness, and for a second he could only blink at her in shock. “Right,” he said with a tiny shake of his head to clear it, “What’s the cargo, just you two?”

“Us and a droid, yes,” Tom said. When the boy peered around trying to find it, he continued, “It’s very small. You’ll hardly even know it’s there.” He shoved a few wandering eye stalks back in his bag with a touch more strength than necessary.

“Alright. Make it sixteen thousand total, and we’ve got a deal,” the boy said, “I’ll have to talk to my pilot—I’m actually the mechanic—but she’ll agree.”

Tom nodded, and they shook on it.

And then the first sound of blaster shots fired from outside.

* * *

Some minutes ago, in a more modern yet equally run down club across the street, a young woman sat at a bar stool nursing a drink far stronger than her brother’s sugary blue concoction. She wore her dark hair in a long braid which spilled over her shoulder onto a black, sleeveless jacket and a white shirt underneath. On the stool next to her sat a tall, skinny insect-like creature that looked somewhat like a praying mantis with a chrome finish, whose shiny purple hide glinted in the swinging strobe lights: a Tawalf.

“Look, Greedo,” the woman said, “I’ll get you the money in a week, no earlier.”

“You said that last week as well,” said the Tawalf, its voice full of clicks and buzzes. It tapped the end of one forelimb on the bar irritably.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. We had a few setbacks last week. I’ll get it sorted out,” she waved its complaints off, “Since when have I failed to get a payment in, even if it’s overdue?”

“Three times in this last year alone,” he said without hesitation.

The woman thought for a second, then rolled her eyes in concession. “Fine. But I’m still working on it.”

“If you don’t make this deadline,” Greedo said slowly, “I can make your life a living hell. More importantly, Jabba can make your life a living hell.”

“It’s almost like I’ve heard that one before,” she said airily, “But look—” She waved her arms to encompass the club lights and the dance floor, having to shout to be heard as the music swelled to a bone-shaking volume. “No hell.”

For a moment, Greedo sat there, completely still besides his clacking forelimb. Then in one smooth motion, he pulled out a portable holographic displayer and smacked it on the bar between them. He tapped a few buttons on the side of the thick, rectangular prism, and the device flickered to life.

The stripy image of what looked like a school ID floated above the counter, providing a steady glow to illuminate the woman’s suddenly stony expression. Staring back at her from the hologram was her own smiling face, several years younger than the flesh-and-blood counterpart sitting in the club.

“Where did you get this?” she asked, an odd haunted look in her eyes.

Greedo didn’t answer, and instead began reciting, “Carmela Rodriguez, grade eight. Sister of Kit and Helena Rodriguez and daughter of Juan and Marina Rodriguez, reported deceased with your brother and parents in the battle of Corellia.”

Carmela Rodriguez stared at Greedo, her expression unreadable. “Where. Did. You. Get. This?” she repeated.

“It’s amazing what you can find in a ship’s purchase records,” Greedo said in response, “Your Millenium Falcon, for example, used to belong to your father, who bought it from an old dealership in the equatorial belt. When I saw he was the last official owner of the ship, I decided to do some digging.”

“So what?” Carmela flipped her braid behind her shoulder in feigned nonchalance, “I inherited it, simple as that. And people slip through the cracks in planetary records all the time after major battles.”

“But how do you think this would look to Imperial law enforcement?” Greedo said, “Faked death, stolen ship, forcing your brother into labor, illegal smuggling…”

“I stay within the law, Greedo,” she snapped, “That’s why Jabba keeps me around, cause’ I know all the loopholes.”

“Yes, that’s what you’ve always said. You’ve _also_ claimed to be twenty-two years old, but this…” Greedo gestured at the holographic ID, “Was dated from four years ago and lists you as thirteen then. Last I checked, the Empire frowns upon underage freighter pilots.”

Carmela glared at him. “You wouldn’t dare…”

“I would,” he said, then paused before continuing, staring lazily at his forelimb now tracing patterns in the bar counter, “Of course, there’s another option…”

“You want money? Chocolate? I can get you chocolate,” Carmela offered, but Greedo only gave a harsh bark of laughter.

“You can’t pay off Jabba, girl! Why would I think you’d pay me as well?” It jerked its head up in its species approximation of an eye roll, “No, I was talking about someone who can actually guarantee me a profit.”

Underneath the bar, out of Greedo's sight, Carmela fingered open the thigh pocket of her bright green and pink cargo pants and slowly slid something out into her hand.

“If you don’t show up with your twenty thousand credits, Jabba the Yaldiv will put out a bounty on your head worth twice what you owe—”

Carmela didn’t hesitate when she pulled the trigger of her modified blaster-turned-laser dissociator, easily dodging the parrying shot that the Tawalt fired just a split second too late.

She stood up, waved goodbye to the bartender, and walked out the door. No one payed her the slightest attention, and no one payed attention to the body of the Tawalt propped up against the bar. Or so she thought, until out of the corner of her eye, she saw an amphibious alien she’d passed on the way outside speaking in hushed tones to a pair of stormtroopers by the club’s entrance.

She didn’t wait to ask herself what the stormtroopers were doing there before she broke into a sprint.


	8. Aggressive Negotiations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, this chapter took soooo long to write. It kept fighting me every step of the way, and I'd write one sentence, delete it, write it again, delete the entire paragraph... until I'd end up on tumblr or youtube or something to avoid it. So finally I just started from scratch using Carmela's pov instead of Nita's, and I actually really like how it turned out.
> 
> Moral of the story: if at first you don't succeed, give up and start again.

Carmela Rodriguez could think of numerous times in her short life when she had thought with one hundred percent certainty that she was going to die. In the past, back when she and Kit had just patched up their papa’s old ship and set out to make a dishonest living for themselves, she had assumed the number of dangerous situations they got themselves in would dwindle as they gained experience. Now she realized that naïve hope was nothing more than a symptom of her _in_ experience. If anything, the dangerous situations came more frequently now that they’d made a name for themselves amongst the galaxy’s underbelly. The only thing that changed was their ability to handle those situations.

Nothing ever came close to the terror of that first night, the last night, the night of the battle, when the muffled sound of laser weapons and screams cut short were all that filtered through the roof of the bunker as she and Kit clung to each other in the pitch darkness, not daring to voice out loud what they both thought. They had known long before the first rays of morning sun replaced the erratic glow of plasma weapons filtering through the ventilation shaft, that they would never see their parents again alive.

No, nothing compared to that night. But this? This was bad.

What stormtroopers lacked in aim, she had learned, they more than made up for in numbers. Before she could get further than two thirds of the way down the street, two pairs of troopers spilled into the intersection she was aiming for, alerted by their fellows’ shouts of warning. She spun around, whipping out her laser dissociator, but the two at the far end of the street had their weapons out as well, already trained on her.

In the second before they fired the first shot, she had time for a single thought: _I am so screwed._

The bolt missed her by a good three feet and blasted the swinging sign off a nearby pub. Making a split decision, she dived for it, ducking a second shot from the other side of the street. She snatched up the big wooden sign in one hand and swung it in front of her face, just as a third shot from the far end nearly blew it out of her hands. She fired a volley of returning shots at the nearest group of stormtroopers.

All around her, people fled the street in terror, adding screams and trampling feet to the whine of blaster bolts zipping through the air. As they ran every which way to get out of the crossfire, even more stormtroopers appeared at both ends of the street, blocking any hope of escape for Carmela.

_I am in deep, deep shit. Why are there so many bucketheads on this shab of a planet?_

Just as she was about to surrender and get Kit to break her out again once he realized what had happened, the door to the pub—whose sign she was currently using to shield from another rain of blaster bolts from both directions—flew open just a few feet in front of her, and out ran…

Kit, both his blasters in hand. She’d forgotten he was here fishing for clients while she met with Greedo.

“Look out!” she shouted, thrusting her makeshift shield between him and another stray laser.

“Thanks for that,” Kit said, ducking underneath it to fire at their attackers. “You take that side, I take this one.”

“I’m on it.” Carmela swung herself around to face the nearer group of stormtroopers, all nine of them now, and let off another round of blasts. “How many’re over there?” she growled, ducking her head as a red laser nearly scorched her wildly swinging braid.

“Seven—no, six!” Kit shouted over the sound of his weapons, “Shit, seven again! Where the kriff are they coming from?”

Carmela leaped to her right, dodging another near miss. Her mouth flew open to give a snarky reply, but the words died in her throat as her ears picked up an unmistakable sound.

It was a sound Carmela had heard only once long ago, but it was seared so permanently in her memory that even four years and a lifetime later, even bombarded by the blasters’ shrill whines and explosions, even surrounded by Ireland’s cool breeze instead of the stale, muggy heat of a basement bunker, she couldn’t fail to recognize it. It came from behind her to her left, from the entrance to the pub: a high-pitched swooshing noise not unlike that of a sword sliding from its sheath, followed by a low, persistent hum. And the glow… This one was green, not red, but it made little difference to Carmela. That sound, combined with the plasma glow, could only mean one thing. Death.

She spun around, taking care to still shield herself from the stormtroopers, to see a tall man with somewhat graying hair and a face set in stern, straight lines standing in the doorway, holding in his hands the object Carmela had only seen in nightmares: a lightsaber. His eyes flitted across the scene, assessing the situation as quickly as Kit had, but instead of launching himself directly into the fray this man strode calmly but purposefully out into the street in front of Carmela, seemingly unconcerned by the blaster bolts whizzing past him. He left behind a young, mousy girl of about Kit’s age, standing frozen in the doorway with the all-too-familiar terror of someone who had never been exposed to a firefight before in her life. Beyond an initial pang at the girl’s expression, Carmela couldn’t care less about her.

The shield fell to the ground, and she raised her laser dissociator to shoulder level, using both hands to aim it at the man’s back…

“Mela, behind you!” Kit yelled. He tackled her to the ground, knocking the blaster from her hand as a red bolt flew through the space where her head had been not a second earlier. “What the hell were you thinking?”

She rolled out from under him and snatched up her dissociator and shield again, not bothering to reply. They both picked themselves off the cobblestones, and Kit picked off another stormtrooper who dared come too close as well, but when Carmela turned to do the same, she found no such opportunity.

The man with the lightsaber—the Jedi—held all of her troopers’ attention as he continued towards them, untouchable by their blasters. It was obvious even under their masks how nervous he made them. Some exchanged uncertain glances, and others began slowly backing up. The man twirled his lightsaber experimentally a few times, the way one might to reacquaint oneself with an old weapon’s balance, and attacked.

Carmela had heard tales of a lone Jedi taking out entire battalions of trained soldiers during the Republic’s reign, but even after she left Corellia she’d always assumed they were just that: tales, legends, fiction. Only now, with a shiver running down her spine, did she begin to wonder if there was some truth to them.

This man wielded a lightsaber with deadly precision, slicing through stormtroopers like their armor was made of butter. Nothing they did came close to harming him, and within seconds they fell, one after another, until the eighth and last stormtrooper clattered to the ground, clutching his severed firing arm at the elbow.

“Come on, before more show up!” the Jedi barked, motioning for the smugglers to follow him.

Carmela spun back around to find Kit still battling the second group of stormtroopers. The mousy girl from the pub had apparently overcome her terror and was now, Carmela realized with a jolt, fighting alongside Kit with a lightsaber of her own, though she clearly had none of the expertise that the other Jedi possessed. She didn’t hesitate to lower her weapon and run after him as soon as he gave the command. Kit got in two more rounds with his blasters as he jogged backward before he copied her. He caught Carmela’s eye as he passed, and his eyes told her everything she needed to know.

 _Listen to him,_ they said, _Don’t you dare do something stupid._ Like trying to kill him.

Grudgingly, she followed.

As they neared the intersection, the Jedi shouted, “Where’s your ship?”

“Spaceport! That way!” Kit pointed down the right-hand street, and they all rounded the corner in that direction. The man waited to take up the rear, now using his lightsaber to somehow deflect the stormtroopers’ blaster bolts away from them. Carmela was loathe to expose her back to him, but Kit shot her a quick glare over his shoulder that stopped her from protesting.

If she couldn’t keep an eye on the Jedi, she could take the lead. She put on a surge of speed, her feet pounding on the cobblestones as she passed both Kit and the young girl. Periodically turning over her shoulder to shoot at the pursuing stormtroopers, she focused most of her attention on the new cast of fleeing pedestrians in front of her, searching among them for the one thing that could give her an upper hand over the Imperial troops.

Down a street to the left, she saw a landspeeder lying abandoned, but it was too small to fit all four of them, and as much as Carmela would like to ditch the Jedi, she passed it up knowing she could find better vehicles to steal. She saw a car with actual wheels on the side of the road, which she rejected based on its dilapidation alone. And a little further down the street was a rusty, beat up old repulsortruck with a wood-planked hoverpallet hooked to the back, sagging somewhat in the air.

 _Perfect,_ Carmela thought.

“Kit!” she shouted over her shoulder, pointing at the truck. Kit needed no more explanation than that. He ran ahead of her and slid into the driver’s seat, quickly reaching under the control console to start hotwiring it. Carmela slid onto the bed of the truck, ignoring the way it bobbed under her sudden weight, and called out to the people following them, “Hop on now, or we’re leaving you behind!”

The girl jumped on behind her, wide-eyed and panting heavily, and a few seconds later the adult Jedi stepped backward onto the pallet, still knocking away blaster bolts with his lightsaber.

“Kit, hurry up with that,” Carmela muttered, eyeing the distance between them and the still-advancing stormtroopers warily.

“I’m working on it!” Kit said, his voice muffled from his contorted position under the console.

“ _Kit…”_

The truck lurched forward a few feet and stalled. Carmela felt her blood turn to ice as the stormtroopers broke into a sprint. The Jedi kept blocking their shots with his lightsaber, somehow aiming them to ricochet back at the stormtroopers, and Carmela pulled out her dissociator again and started blasting at them. Nothing seemed to stop them from coming closer. Even the Jedi slowly picking them off couldn’t deter the rest.

Then the truck gave a spluttering cough, billowing black smoke over the hoverpallet, and roared back to life. Kit gave a triumphant hoot as it zoomed down the street. The stormtroopers were left stumbling to a halt in a cloud of fumes, beaten.

Carmela slumped back against the truck, ignoring its painful rattling shooting through her skull as the truck weaved in and out of pedestrians and around street corners. She let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding, and beside her the mousy girl did the same. The Jedi clipped his sheathed lightsaber to a loop in his belt and eased himself down onto the pallet, wincing as he did so.

“I am getting too old for this,” he groaned, “I’m out of practice.”

“How did you _do_ that? With the- the lightsaber, and the…” the girl blathered, awestruck as she twirled her hands in the air, miming the way he’d spun his blade.

“Later,” the man waved it away, still breathless from the chase. He turned to Carmela, and she felt her anger spike through her exhaustion as he said, “Nice to meet you, I suppose. My name’s Tom; that’s Nita. I’m assuming you’re our pilot?”

“You’re not getting anywhere near my ship, you hear me, _Jedi?_ ” she spat, jabbing her finger at him.

From the front of the repulsortruck, Kit said, “A simple ‘hi, thanks for saving my life’ would’ve worked _just_ fine.”

“Sure, I’m gonna thank them when they’re the reason we _needed_ saving!” she snarked back, “Or do you think we’re stupid enough to think it’s a coincidence the stormtroopers are here in the first place?”

“There’s rarely such a thing,” Tom said.

Carmela snarled.

“Well, whatever the reason, they did just save our lives, so it’s the least we can do to help them out,” Kit started to say.

“Nothing good ever comes from helping a Jedi,” Carmela said. Tom stayed silent, giving nothing away with his expression. Nita’s wide eyes darted from one person to another. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but Kit beat her to it.

“Hey, they’re running from the Imperials too, aren’t they? Enemy of my enemy, and all that,” he said.

“So we’ll drop them off at the port. Let them fend for themselves. Anything more is just begging to get us killed.”

“ _But_ if we leave them here, the Imps’ll send an army to kill _them,_ ” Kit pointed out, “At least if they’re with us, the Empire’ll leave the planet alone.”

Carmela froze, staring at her brother with an expression not unlike the one she had given Greedo after he showed her his hologram. For several minutes, the only sounds were the splutters and whines of the repulsortruck as Kit raced through the spaceport entrance. Nita glanced nervously at Tom.

Finally, Carmela spoke again. “How much are you paying for the trip?” she said, her voice barely audible over the engines.

“Sixteen thousand credits,” Tom said.

“Make it twenty.” She could dump them wherever they wanted to go and leave. She and Kit didn’t have to get involved in any of this Jedi business any more than they had to. And they could pay off the debt to the Yaldiv.

The repulsortruck swerved to a halt in front of the disk-shaped _Millennium Falcon_ in tense silence.


	9. Deconstructing the Jedi Code: "There is no emotion, there is peace."

The _Millennium Falcon’s_ entrance ramp led into a curved, padded hallway, which Kit and Carmela immediately turned right off of into what Nita assumed was the cockpit. Kit told her and Tom to follow the hallway to its end before he disappeared around the corner. It opened onto a large, dimly lit room with grated flooring. A dejarik table stood tucking away in a niche, with a half-circle booth surrounding it. Nita slid into it alongside Tom and took the time to look at the room around her.

The interior of the _Millennium Falcon_ felt exactly like the exterior of the _Millennium Falcon_ , except with more random junk lying around, and a sweet, cloying smell permeating the air. Nita remembered it wafting from a few of the seedier alien clubs in town, but beyond that she couldn’t identify it. Everything, from the wall panels covered in toggles and blinking lights, to the mismatched chairs bolted behind a control panel, looked like it had either been pulled straight from the garbage or scavenged from other, even more dilapidated vessels. Nita’s first instinct was to dump the ship in the hills and leave it for the Fomori to find.

As the ship’s engines began firing up, rattling her seat, she had to force down a lump in her throat. During the battle—though she suspected no one who had seen an actual battle would call it such—she had acted purely on instinct, swinging the lightsaber every which way in the hope, and secret dread, of landing a hit. She couldn’t have afforded to think of how closely every blaster bolt whizzing past her head came to killing her. She couldn’t have afforded to think about anything, because if she’d allowed herself that she would have frozen again, like she did when first confronted with the scene outside the pub, and then she surely would have died.

Now all those thoughts had time to catch up with her.

At this time yesterday she had been a simple ranch hand, worried only about the price of a droid and the temperament of the horses. Now the Galactic Empire personally wanted her dead. In less than twenty-four hours, she had uncovered an ancient religion, accidentally  _joined_ the ancient religion, become tied up in a secret Rebel plot, been shot at by stormtroopers, and now she sat in the belly of a smuggler’s ship about to leave her planet behind, perhaps for the last time.

 _Be careful what you wish for,_ her aunt’s voice said in her ear, always with that bitter edge of experience.

For as long as Nita could remember, she had dreamed of shooting through the stars, of rocketing past the moons of far off systems and visiting planets so alien, so bizarre, that they could only exist in her datapad. The destination, whether the bustling planet-wide metropolis of Coruscant or the lavish artistry of Naboo or Alderaan, never mattered to her, so long as she could escape the monotony of rural Ireland and Aunt Annie’s horses. She couldn’t count how many versions she had created in her head of the takeoff, watching out the window as the planet slowly grew smaller and smaller, until all the myriad greens blended into one, and the swirls and eddies in the clouds made themselves apparent in those final moments before it all streaked to white.

Her fantasies never involved a windowless room with Crazy Swale and a fugitive rebel droid sitting in a knapsack on his lap.

A tentative beep came from inside the bag, and Spot poked a few eye stalks out from underneath the flap.

“Safe now?” it asked.

“Yeah, little guy,” Tom said softly, “We’re safe now.”

Spot poked its front end out of the bag, its eyes swiveling to take in the entire room. It cautiously scuttled all the way out, spun around a few times, and settled down on Tom’s lap. A soft, rhythmic hum emanated from its cooling vents, like a cat purring. Nita smiled shakily at the resemblance.

“What  _is_ Spot, anyway?” she asked, trying to take her mind off their situation before she started crying again. Or screaming. Or both. “I’ve never seen a droid like it before.”

“Spot is a manual droid, an Apple model. We were beta-testing them in the last few years of the Pullulus Wars,” Tom explained, tracing his finger around the apple design on its case. “As far as I know, Spot here is the only one who survived the Purge. But they held everything from the Jedi archives in their memory banks, as well as basic training instructions and communications. In theory, they were supposed to help padawans—Jedi in training, basically—on their Ordeals. Usually the Jedi masters would be there to help in whatever ways they could, but with everyone off at war they didn’t have that option anymore. So instead, we started developing these guys.” He tapped Spot’s case with a sad smile that Nita recognized immediately as the same one Aunt Annie made on those rare occasions she would talk about her brother, Nita’s father.

Aunt Annie. She was still down there, somewhere, probably surrounded by stormtoopers and going out of her mind with worry. She had no idea what had happened to Nita, or even if she was still alive. For that matter…

 _Don’t even think about that,_ Nita told herself, feeling the sharp sting of tears welling up again in the corners of her eyes. If anything happened to Aunt Annie because of Nita’s involvement in this mess, Nita didn’t know if she could live with herself.

“Tom,” she said, her voice hardly more than a squeak, “You said Spot had comm functions?”

“Yes,” he said, waiting for her to finish.

“Do you think…” She took a deep, shaky breath. “Do you think we could get to get a message to Aunt Annie, just to let her know I’m okay?”

“I wish we could, Nita. I really do. But the stormtroopers are probably still watching her, and it would be too much of a risk to try to contact her when there’s a chance it could put her in even more danger. I’m sorry,” Tom said. Then, seeing the look on Nita’s face, he added, “I wouldn’t be too worried about your aunt, though. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Callahans, it’s that they’re a lot tougher than the world gives them credit for. They don’t let anyone push them around, no matter what, and Annie’s no exception. Something tells me she’ll make it through this just fine.”

That was the last straw for Nita’s already overtaxed emotions. Before Tom could say anything more, she burst into tears again.

She didn’t think to wonder how he knew anything about her family until much later.

* * *

Meditation had never been one of Dairine’s strong suits, even under normal circumstances.

She sat cross-legged on the metal floor with her eyes closed and her back pressed against the dividing wall into Roshaun’s cell. Her bound hands rested on her ankles, and she straightened her spine, slowly falling into a steady, measured rhythm of breathing. Exhale… Inhale… Exhale… Inhale… Repeat.

“Relax,” Carl’s instructions came floating to the surface of her thoughts from the depths of time, “Don’t worry about anything else right now; just focus on your breathing. Try to let all the tension drain from your muscles.”

Her brow furrowed at the sudden memory, and she tried to push it forcefully from her mind. Instead, another snippet from the same lesson surfaced. “Don’t try to think about not thinking about something; you’ll only think about it harder, and that just leads to headache,” Carl had said, “If I say ‘don’t think about Roshaun dying his hair purple,’ what do you immediately think of?”

“Roshaun dying his hair purple,” Dairine had giggled. Now, the image popped into her brain again, of Ro trying to look dignified and royal with bright fuchsia locks hanging down around his ears.

“Exactly,” had been Carl’s reply when he first told her that, “Pretend you’re a rock sitting at the bottom of a river; you have to let all your thoughts, all your worries and ideas, everything—you have to let them flow right over your head. The more effort you put into it, the easier it is to get swept away by the current.”

Dairine had never understood that. Her entire life had taught her that, if she just tried hard enough, she could achieve anything. She was engaged in a never-ending battle of wills with the universe, and as long as she kept channeling more stubborn energy into a problem--any problem--she knew it would eventually have to give in. Until then, she’d never come up against an issue that didn’t abide by that law, let alone subverted it, and she still had trouble wrapping her mind around the concept sometimes.

She scowled, growing more and more irritated with herself by the second. _None of this is_ helping, she thought, _It_ never _helps!_ With another surge of irritation, she tried to quash that line of thinking, reminding herself why she had turned to meditating in the first place and instead finding another one of Carl’s lessons lying in wait.

“Once you’ve cleared your mind of conscious thought, you have to do the same with your emotions,” the memory told her, “They can cloud your judgment if you give them too much power over you. They introduce bias into otherwise objective decisions, and one of the goals of meditation is to rid yourself of that.”

Now, just as she had then, Dairine felt herself growing annoyed with Carl as well for the impossible task he imposed on her. Her ever-present undercurrent of anger and frustration threatened to boil over again, and she had no control over it. The fact that it was Carl who said those things did nothing to help her current situation.

 _Don’t think about Carl right now,_ she thought, fully aware of the irony, _Don’t think about what Roshaun said. Don’t think about all the reports you’ve read about Imperial torture techniques._

_Shut up, you kriffing idiot!_

Dairine thumped her head against the wall, groaning in frustration. Finally, she took a deep breath and decided to start over.

Breathe in… Breathe out… Let go. The softly babbling stream washing over her, cooling her fire…

Gradually, her mind drifted closer to the purpose of her meditation: the Force-suppressors binding her wrists. She felt the low-level buzz of an electric current arcing through them, and the cold bite of metal against her skin, but when she reached out with the Force, she felt nothing at all.

A tinge of panic rose up in her throat, and she forced it down again.

 _Come on, Dairine, you knew that would happen,_ she scolded herself, keeping her inner voice light, _Get a hold of yourself._

She poked at the cuffs again with her senses, rolling the dilemma around in her mind in hope of a solution falling into place. All her plans for escape depended on her somehow getting out of the cuffs. If she could do that, everything else would be cake. Or doable, at least.

But that electric buzzing kept distracting her. Something about it almost felt familiar.

She remembered reading something about Force-dampening technology in Spot’s records, about how the early Empire managed to round up everyone with even the slightest sensitivity to the Force using them, but nothing else stuck in her memory. What she wouldn’t give to have Spot back right now.

_There’s no use thinking like that. If I’m gonna get us out of here, I’ve got to do it myself._

Just in case, she asked Roshaun through the wall if he had any luck with his cuffs. He hadn’t, though not for lack of trying.

But that _buzzing._ It felt like a busy signal on a comlink that wouldn’t go away, like the electric whine of old machinery, too quiet to hear but too loud to ignore. It felt like…

Like the background hum of the Mobiles’ trinary.

In the days following her Ordeal, she could hardly function on a human level due to the constant sensory overload that came from one half of her brain trying to run at supercomputer speeds and the other half expending all of its energy trying to keep up. Her link to the Mobiles had weakened to manageable levels over time, and now their faint chattering felt more like comforting white noise in the background of her thoughts. She hardly noticed it anymore unless she made a conscious effort to listen in, and it hadn’t even occurred to her that the computer hybrid part of her brain might transcend the Force itself, enough to resist the dampeners. But sure enough, when she tapped into it she could feel it buzzing away like nothing had changed.

Which meant she could talk to the cuffs machine-to-machine, the same way she could normally talk to inanimate objects using the Force. If she sent a message to the electronic locking mechanism, to tell it to release…

The cuffs clicked open, and the crackle of electricity running along the metal’s inner edge disappeared.

Dairine grinned.

Now all she had to do was wait.


	10. Padawan Training

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started this fic mostly on a whim, and now it's more than double the length of anything else I've ever posted here ever, which means I've had to spend the last few days Getting My Shit Together for this thing. So I've made a few minor (and one not-so-minor) changes.  
> 1) The Clone Wars are now the Pullulus Wars, because I made that connection the other day and decided to include it. Still not sure how I'd make that work with the prequel timeline, but that's an issue for another day.  
> 2) The Emperor is now the Empress. Make of that what you will. (Actually, I'd love to hear any theories you may have about where you think I'm going with this fic)  
> 3) (and this is the only major change) I realized after I posted the last chapter that I didn't have time to properly explore the subplot I'd introduced at the end of Nita's section, so I changed that bit to something else so I don't have to worry about that.
> 
> On an unrelated note: This fic won't contail any spoilers for GWP, so no worries. BUT OH MY GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S OUT I'M SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!

Kit poked his head into the “living room” area of the ship, knocking on the wall to announce his presence, and paused. He had expected to see the passengers sitting around the holotable, or at the engineering station to the left. Instead, he found Nit standing at the center of the room in a defensive stance, lightsaber held aloft. A spherical security droid floated in front of her, and Tom sat off to the side, looking unconcerned while it shot her again and again with its weak yet painful lasers.

“Hey!” Kit shouted. Without thinking, he whipped a blaster from his belt holster and fired two shots at the droid. Nita twisted around at the sound of his voice, and her lightsaber swung down as if of its own volition. The bolts landed squarely on the blade and bounced off again. One hit the ceiling, and the other narrowly missed Tom’s shoulder. For a second nobody moved a muscle.

“I did it!” Nita said, her face lighting up with uncontained glee. “I don’t know how, but I did it!”

“Might want to work on your aim next,” Tom chuckled.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Nita said sheepishly.

Kit blinked, slowly lowering his blaster. “Uh… I’m missing something here. That thing _didn’t_ go rouge and try to kill you?”

“No, I was training with it,” Nita said, still looking sheepish. She flicked the blade of her lightsaber off and lowered it, while the security droid bobbed innocently behind her, “I didn’t want a repeat of the fight with the stormtroopers, so I figured now’s as good a time as any to learn how to actually defend myself with this thing.” She waved the lightsaber hilt around.

“Oh. Right,” Kit said, still too dazed to say much else.

“Sorry, we should have asked before we borrowed the droid,” Tom said.

“No, that’s fine. We were busy with the ship.” Kit slid his blaster back into its holster. “Anyway, I just came out here to say we’ve reached hyperspace, and it should take just a few hours now to get to Wellakh.”

“Thanks,” Nita said. Tom nodded his agreement.

“Okay, then. I’ll just…” Kit pointed with his thumb back into the hallway, towards the cockpit, and turned to leave before this conversation could get any more awkward. He got two steps before he paused, chewing uncomfortably on the inside of his cheek as he debated with himself. He turned around.

“Look, I’m sorry about… you know, everything with Carmela back there,” he said, wishing he knew some easier way to say it, “She’s not normally like that. It’s just…” He trailed off again. _Oh, it’s just that she hates everything you stand for and probably wants to kill you, but don’t worry, it’s nothing personal._ Kit’s face contorted into an apologetic grimace as he envisioned kicking whatever part of him liked to suggest those sarcastic comments.

“Your accent’s Corellian, isn’t it?” Tom asked quietly.

Kit nodded, realizing with that one question that he needn’t say another word in explanation, because the Jedi already understood.

“I’m so sorry,” Tom said.

Kit gave an uncomfortable, one-armed shrug, his eyes wandering across the floor grating. “It’s not like it’s your fault,” he said, “You guys shouldn’t be blamed for the Empire’s cruelty.”

“That depends on who you ask,” Tom said.

Both Kit and, across the room, Nita glanced up in surprise at the sudden, dark edge to his voice. It was a tone Kit had all too much experience with, after long nights of finding Carmela slumped in the corner of a tumble-down cantina, despite all of Kit’s begging for her to stay away from alcohol. She would go on and on about their parents, and the Empire, and even Helena, wherever she was. Sometimes she’d cry, sometimes she’d rant, but the worst were the times she’d say nothing at all, just stare off into the distance with dead eyes.

Kit had been young enough when the Empire invaded that his memories of their parents felt clouded, as if his life before the battle had only been one long fairytale. But Carmela remembered everything in harsh, vivid detail, and underneath her normally bubbly exterior hid a swirling storm of regret, despair, nostalgia, desperation, and a burning hatred for everyone who’d played a part in taking their parents from them. Kit had always had a knack for sensing other people’s emotions—Mela called him a human bullshit detector for the number of times his gut had saved them from making deals with people intending to screw them over—and he would bet credits that this Jedi knew some of the same misplaced guilt that ate at Carmela.

He found Tom staring at him with a thoughtful, almost curious expression, and Kit suddenly wondered if there was some truth in the old myth that Jedi could read minds.

“Sorry if I’m prying,” Nita spoke up, shifting Kit’s attention to her, “I don’t know much about Corellia, but… what exactly happened?”

Tom glanced back at Kit in deference, but Kit gave him a slight, upward nod of his head, telling him to go ahead and explain it himself. Somehow it was easier if someone else did most of the talking.

“Some years ago…” Tom began.

“Four years and seven months,” Kit whispered.

Tom nodded solemnly. “The Empress got wind of a Jedi hiding out on Corellia who’d survived the Purge, like I and a few others had. Her name was—”

“Irina Mladen,” a new voice said. Kit spun around to see Carmela standing right behind him, one hand planted on her hip and the other leaning against the wall. She pushed herself off the wall and brushed past Kit, making her way to the engineering station on the left-hand wall. Kit had to wonder how much she had heard of the conversation beforehand.

“The Empire sent an army to kill one woman in a town with no defense system, and they called it a _battle,”_ she spat, “The only thing that kept us from being massacred like our parents was that they had the smarts to build a shelter in the basement during the Pullulus Wars.” She sat down in the chair and swiveled toward the viewscreen, facing away from the Jedi and Jedi-in-training. Nita stared at her back with obvious shock and horror written on her face, and Kit looked away before he could see pity written there as well.

Tom let out a long, slow breath and nodded again. “I could sense the devastation through the Force all the way on Ireland,” he said.

Still facing the wall, Carmela made a small noise of skepticism in the back of her throat. Kit wondered if he could reach far enough to stomp on her foot from his position.

“I take it you don’t believe in the Force,” Tom said with much more patience than Kit would have given his sister had their positions been reversed.

“I believe that you Jedis believe in it, enough to die for it,” Carmela said. Kit could almost hear her next retort in his mind: “ _Enough to let everyone else die for it as well,”_ but she bit back the words before they could leave her mouth. Kit breathed a sigh of relief. At least now she’d backed down from overt hostility toward their clients.

 _Baby steps, Mela,_ he thought, _Baby steps._

* * *

The tension in the room hadn’t died down by the time Nita switched her lightsaber back on— _and when did I start calling it_ my _lightsaber?—_ and planted herself in front of the security droid again. She could almost feel the nexus of emotion around Carmela like a physical thing pushing everyone else away. Even with her back turned to the smuggler, Nita could still sense the pent up tangle of grief hovering over Carmela, and the twisting embarrassment rolling off her brother in waves.

“Ow!” A laser from the security droid hit her on the hand, jerking her thoughts back to her training. Reflexively, she dropped her lightsaber and started flapping her hand to try to ease the stinging sensation. “Why can’t I do this now? I had it earlier.”

“You’re losing focus,” Tom said. Nita was amazed that he could focus at all with Kit and Carmela there, after what had just happened. “Concentrate on the droid, and let the Force guide you. It might feel like you’re acting on instinct at first until you get used to it.”

Nita nodded and picked up her lightsaber again, repositioning it in her hands. She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath, and tried to envision her senses expanding beyond herself, like thin, smoky tendrils stretching from her mind to the droid that bobbed in front of her. A shaky image began to form in her head, and her eyes nearly flew open in shock, but she forced them to stay shut. The image slowly coalesced into a rough spherical shape, with smaller circles jutting out to form the blasters.

But, she realized, it was not an image. It was an impression, a three-dimensional rendering of the droid, as if she was seeing it from every angle at once. Her jaw dropped.

“I can see it,” she said, “Or sense it, or _something_. It feels like… more like echolocation than actual sight.”

“Good,” Tom said, and Nita sensed something akin to pride flare up in the direction of the dejarik table, where Tom sat.

 _Wait, is that what I’ve been doing with Kit and Carmela?_ She wondered, _Was I sensing their emotions through the Force without even realizing it?_

Before she could contemplate it further, Tom continued. “Now let’s see if you can block it.”

Nita curled her fingers tighter around the hilt of her lightsaber. She reached further through the Force, and more “impressions” flooded her mind from the rest of the room, leaving her momentarily blind as she tried to sort through them. Underneath it all, she could sense the burning curiosity that betrayed Kit’s casual lean against the doorway, and a similar, yet infinitely more reluctant, strain coming from Carmela. Then, suddenly, Nita relaxed again.

“What’s the range on this… this Force thing? Seeing things through the Force?” she asked Tom, strangely reluctant to test it on her own. She got the feeling she might be happier not knowing everything that was on this ship.

“Theoretically, you could use it to take in the entire known universe, but theory and practice rarely agree,” Tom said, “In reality, it varies from Jedi to Jedi. Older Force-users tend to have wider ranges, trading the sheer power of youth for precision and experience. But I’ve seen Padawans starting out with anywhere from a few meters to a kilometer limit to their control.”

“What’s your range?” Nit asked, her curiosity getting the better of her again.

Tom didn’t seem to mind her prying. “Before the war ended, I could cover a mid-sized city on a good day, but now… Like I said, I’m out of practice.” He glanced over at Kit and Carmela. “These days, it’s best not to broadcast your presence in the Force.”

Nita wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she focused her attention on the droid again, taking a few seconds to fall back into the Force-sensing. Her fingers twitched in anticipation of the droid’s attack, waiting for… what? _How do I ‘let the Force guide me?’ I don’t even know what that means. What signal am I looking for?_ Nita thought back to her near-instinctual motions earlier when Kit had surprised her, and somewhere in her head the gears clicked into place.

 _Now,_ a voice whispered in her mind, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, and she didn’t question it; she just moved, and her lightsaber moved with her, swinging up in a quick arc to freeze at eye level. As abruptly as she acted, the droid fired once, twice, and she angled her blade away from her. The blasts bounced off its surface one after the other, both reflecting back to hit the droid instead.

“There you have it!” Tom said, grinning, “You picked that up quick, especially for someone who just got her lightsaber last night.”

At the same time, a slow, incredulous smile spread across Kit’s face. “ _Daaaaaamn_ ,” he said, prompting a burst of… something from Carmela. Nita couldn’t even begin to parse out that emotion. “I didn’t know you could do _that_ with echolocation.”

The corner of Nita’s mouth twitched upward at the reference to her earlier comparison. “I didn’t either,” she said distractedly, frowning at the space around her as if searching for the origin of that strange voice. It _sounded_ like her own thoughts, but somehow it didn’t _feel_ the same. But the more she thought about it, the less convinced she was that she had heard anything at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a crazy amount of headcanons about Irina Mladen in this AU that will never play into the actual story so here have them:
> 
> She took her Oath incredibly young. During some of her earlier years, she became interested in world kernels, and on one errantry she temporarily incorporated one into herself, like at the end of WoM, except Irina actually knew what she was doing. Ever since then, no matter where she went, planets could sense that connection and tended to listen to her better than they would otherwise. Because of that, she was known as the Planetary among other Jedi.
> 
> Eventually, she met her husband and fell in love, risking her place in the Jedi Order to get married in secret on his home planet of Corellia. When Irina found out she was pregnant, she panicked, faked her own kidnapping in a spur-of-the-moment decision on errantry, and hid with her husband on Corellia for the next nine months. (All in all, not one of her best thought-out plans) Once the baby was old enough for her to leave, she went back to Corruscant and fed the Order a story about pirates and daring escapes, which they bought because they had no reason not to. For years afterward, she juggled her Jedi duties while returning to see her family in secret every chance she got. (Later, when Betty got pregnant, Irina was the first to figure it out after Betty herself, and she helped keep baby Nita secret too.)
> 
> After the fall of the Republic, she went to live permanently with her family on Corellia, quietly inserting herself into life on that planet with the hopes of keeping a low profile. If you’ve read the Kenobi novel by John Miller (and you should, it’s great. Obi-wan is the worst hermit in the history of hermits, and everyone’s first reaction to meeting him is: “where tf did he come from?” and “oh shit he’s hot”) then you’ve got an idea of how well that went. She did a better job that Obi-wan at first, but still. She and her husband became good friends with their neighbors, the Rodriguez family. Irina quickly noticed the youngest child’s sensitivity to the Force and, despite her reservations, couldn’t resist the temptation to teach him a few little tricks. Kit doesn’t remember any of it, besides one dream where he levitated a pebble, but that’s actually the origin of his “human bullshit detector” skills, since he’s been Force-sensing everyone’s emotions without even realizing it. 
> 
> Irina managed to stay mostly out of the limelight until about 4 years before this story starts, when something happened to force her into action, a la the Sand People attacks in Kenobi. But unlike Obi-Wan, someone in the community sold her out to the Empire, and the rest I pretty much explained in the story. Everyone who tried to fight died: Irina, her husband, their now-grown-up child, Juan and Marina Rodriguez. (Helena had already moved out. She was always more sympathetic towards the Empire than the rest of her family, and after the battle Kit and Carmela didn’t want anything to do with her. By the time she could get back to Corellia, they had already fixed up the Falcon and left.)


	11. Alternative Sects of Light-Side Users: The Guarantors of Wellakh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait again. I wanted to get a bit ahead with writing these next few chapters before I committed to the order I wanted them in.
> 
> Also, I realized there was one more thing I needed to correct in an earlier chapter. Instead of approaching the Death Star/Starsnuffer in the chapter with Vader and General Esprit, they're still floating through a comet cloud near Ireland. Which is annoying because this sort of timeline thing is exactly what I was trying to fix, and I forgot about it :/

This time Nita made sure to be in the cockpit for the jump out of hyperspace, to see the swirling blue of the hyperspace tunnel shift quickly into streaks of white starlight zipping by at near-light speed, decelerating in mere seconds to individual stars… and one planet. Nita’s jaw fell open at the sight of it. Wellakh hung like a great, golden marble against the velvet backdrop of space, half awash in an amber glow from the planet’s sun. It was everything Nita had ever wanted out of her first glimpse of an alien world, and so much more.

“It’s so smooth,” she said, having to shield her eyes from the glare suddenly reflecting off the planet’s glassy surface as the _Falcon_ changed its angle of flight in preparation for atmospheric entry.

“Probably got roasted by the sun at some point,” Carmela said, only half paying attention as she adjusted a few knobs on the cockpit ceiling, “Me and Kit’ve seen a couple other planets like that before.”

“Usually they’re pretty uninhabitable, though,” Kit said from the copilot’s seat.

“And by ‘pretty uninhabitable’ he means only pirates and wanted criminals live there,” Carmela added.

“Yeah, doesn’t really fit Wellakh’s rep, does it?” Kit said, “The planet could’ve just formed like that.”

“Actually, Carmela’s right,” Tom said. Nita felt Carmela’s flicker of irritation, which seemed a bit irrational to Nita considering he was agreeing with her. “But it happened so long ago that the inhabitants have had time to recover. The star only flared up enough to decimate the planet’s sunside at the time, so the other side is still inhabitable. Look, you can see the divide there at the top of the horizon.”

Nita lifted up in her seat to follow where Tom’s finger pointed, just above the terminator line in twilight. As they flew closer, she began to see what he meant. The upper right edge of the planet looked slightly less sleek than everywhere else. There were more bumps and ridges on the surface, which looked infinitesimal from Nita’s perspective, but she knew up close they would turn into immense mountain ranges.

“But still,” Kit said. He took over the ship’s controls as Carmela punched into the navicomputer the surface coordinates that Tom had given her. “If it was hot enough to melt an entire half of a planet, then everything alive should have been burned up, even on the far side. Right?”

“It should have, yes,” Tom said, “And it would have if it weren’t for all the trained Force-users living here at the time. They managed to buy enough time for the early Interconnect Project to fly as many survivors out as they could, and even then only a fraction of the population survived. After the dust settled, so to speak, one family of Force-users in particular were crowned as royalty for their part in saving the planet and helping to rebuild it. The man we’re going to see now is a descendant of that family.”

“As long as he gets me my money, I don’t care who he is,” Carmela said, but Nita’s stomach flipped at the thought of meeting royalty face to face.

As they spoke, the ship had swung around to head straight to the center of the scorched area. There stood the only raised feature visible on the “sunside:” a low, steeply sloping mountain that might have towered over the highest peaks on Nita’s home planet before the solar storm, but now couldn’t be much taller than Sugarloaf. Except, as they flew closer and everything could be seen in more detail, she realized it wasn’t a mountain at all.

It was a palace, peaked by a forest of golden spires and terraces glittering so brightly in the reflected sunlight that at first Nita thought they were on fire. Stretching out for miles around the base, vast gardens carpeted the ground, before giving into the bare, pale earth. Kit let out a long, low whistle of appreciation.

“Overdone. They’re trying too hard,” Carmela scoffed. If Tom’s brief smirk was any indication, he agreed with her.

Nita didn’t care. She could do nothing but stare as Carmela circled the _Falcon_ around to a terrace wider than some sports fields set midway up the structure’s side, recognizable as a spaceport only by the sheer number of ornately designed, jewel-encrusted ships lining its surface.

“Oh yeah, they’re definitely overdoing it,” Carmela said. She pushed a button on the instrument panel and spoke into the comm unit. “This is the _Millennium Falcon,_ requesting permission to land.”

Tom had sent a comm message ahead to warn them of the ship’s arrival, so the reply came immediately. “ _Millennium Falcon,_ you are cleared for landing. Please direct your ship to landing pad B-54. Nelaid ke Seriv am Teliuyve am Meseph am Veliz am Teriaunst am Antev det Nuiiliat, Brother of the Sun, Lord of Wellakh, the Guarantor and his Lady Miril am Miril dev ir Nuiiliat, Sister of the Sun, Lady of the Lands of Wellakh will greet you there.”

“Wow,” Carmela said dryly, angling the ship toward the shining platform.

“And I thought Corellians could have long names,” Kit muttered. Nita giggled despite the increasingly clammy feeling in her hands.

The _Falcon_ dropped onto the pad with more grace than Nita expected from the clunky ship, and they all left the cockpit with Spot scuttling along after them. Kit punched the button to lower the boarding ramp.

Directly in front of the ship stood two figures who seemed to have stepped straight out of J. R. R. Tolkien’s imagination. Both were taller than Tom by at least half a foot and built like elves from Middle Earth, with high cheekbones and long hair: red on the man’s and feathery blond on the woman’s. They, as well as their three guards, wore clothing similar to what Nita had seen in Spot’s hologram, with hazy overtunics and detailed embroidery. But the first thing Nita noticed about either of them was the aura of sheer, regal power the man exuded. The two of them froze momentarily when they caught sight of Spot, just like Tom had in Sugarloaf what felt like a lifetime ago.

 “Guarantor,” Tom said, bowing his head to the Sunlord. “In the Powers’ names, and on Their behalf, greetings from another Mastery.”

“Dispense with the formalities, Tom, or we’ll be here all day,” said the queen, “You said you have news of our children?”

“I do, Lady Miril,” Tom gestured to Spot. “Is there someplace we can speak in private?”

“Do you wish these three to be present as well?” Nelaid asked.

Tom nodded. Kit and Carmela exchanged a glance, confusion pouring off them in the Force, as well as a degree of suspicion. _And not without reason_ , Nita thought. _This entire trip screams secret Rebel plot. Why would Tom bring three near-strangers into the fold, especially when two of them have reason to hate him?_

_Then again, nothing about this day makes any sense._

Nelaid sent Spot with one of the guards to pull Dairine’s data off of it. The rest were led into the palace, through carved corridors with ceilings that seemed to defy gravity, inlaid with precious metals. Nita had never seen so much opulence put on display before, and by the looks on Kit and Carmela’s faces, they hadn’t either.

Eventually, one turbolift ride and several corridors later, they reached a circular room that could probably fit Nita’s entire house inside, but felt small in comparison to the rest of the palace. In the center of the room was a holotable nearly identical to the ones shown in every Pullulus Wars documentary Nita had seen.

“Is it just me,” Kit muttered to Carmela as they spread out around the table, “Or did we just walk into a spy holo?”

Either ignoring or not hearing his remark, Nelaid said, “Before we get down to business, let’s get the introductions over with. Who are you three?”

Next to him and the queen, Nita felt insignificant with her simple, “Juanita Louise Callahan.” Something she would almost call recognition stirred in the eyes of the two Wellakhit, but before she could delve deeper, Kit and Carmela started their introductions, and the moment passed.

“Look, I’m gonna be completely honest here,” Carmela said when she finished, “All we want is to get our money and get out.” Kit looked like he couldn’t decide whether to smack himself in the face or his sister.

Nelaid narrowed his eyes at Tom. “You said we could trust them.”

“And we can,” Tom said quickly, “You’re not about to go running to the Empire with everything we say here, are you?”

With everyone’s eyes on Carmela, the smuggler lowered hers, scuffing the floor with her shoe. “I hate the Empire more than I could ever hate the Jedi. So, no, that’s the last thing I want to do,” she said, as if it hurt to admit it, “But I kinda like not being dead, and that means I don’t want to get stuck between the two. I’m only going along with this meeting because right now you owe me twenty thousand credits.”

There was silence for several seconds, until Nelaid turned back to Tom and said quietly, but with little malice, “You have quite some explaining to do.”

Tom did briefly, with help from Nita and Spot for the beginning. When she mentioned taking the Oath, Nelaid’s expression of shock was nearly identical to the one Tom had given her when she told him, but neither one of them offered any more insight on the matter. Nita went on, trying not to let her slight frustration show. She had assumed, naively she now realized, that being invited in on this meeting meant she would get answers to all of her endless questions. Clearly that wasn’t the case.

 _And why should it be? I’m just some nobody who stumbled into this mess. Why_ should _they tell me everything, especially when they’ve got much more important things to worry about right now?_

“Now, before I can do anything to help,” Tom said once they finished telling their side of the story, “I’d like to know exactly how Dairine and Carl and Roshaun came to be in this situation. I tried asking Spot during the flight, but it wouldn’t tell me anything beyond ‘they’re in danger.’”

Nelaid sighed, and the simple action added ten years to his face. “We were all on our way to the Senate meeting—”

“And Carl was with you?” Tom asked, “That seems risky.”

“He’s become an expert at hiding his presence in the Force,” Nelaid said, “But it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Yesterday has been a long time coming in the Empress’ plans.”

“Have you heard what she called the meeting for?” Miril asked.

Tom shook his head.

“She dissolved the Senate.”

Tom’s head jerked back, and he opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to forget he’d done it.

“We only just heard the news ourselves,” Nelaid said, “The Senate’s last act was to vote itself out of existence.”

Carmela and Kit scoffed bitterly, and Tom said in the same tone, “Self-sabotage has always been a favorite tactic of that One’s.”

“Indeed it has, and this one over eleven years in the making,” Nelaid said, “But at the time of the attack, we were still flying to the meeting. As it turns out, our pilot was an Imperial spy who forced us out of hyperspace just beyond the Teveral system, into the waiting hands of an Imperial cruiser. They attacked and boarded us, and in the midst of it all managed to capture Roshaun and Carl. Miril and I barely escaped with our lives.” He paused, gripping the edge of the holotable, and Miril placed a hand over one of his.

“But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?” Tom said, “Even if he’s out of practice, Carl should have been able to hold off the Imperial troops long enough to get everyone else to safety. Unless…” His eyes grew wide with fear as realization dawned on him.

Both Wellakhit nodded grimly. “Darth Vader,” said Miril. Nita felt a sharp chill descend over Kit and Carmela, and she knew without having to ask that this was the person who had led the army against Corellia.

“I saw him,” Nelaid said, “Carl did what he could, as did the rest of us, but…” He trailed off, something Nita suspected kings rarely did, and sighed.

Tom was staring at him with a curious expression, betraying no thought or emotion, and even through the Force Nita couldn’t decipher anything. “How much do you know about Vader?” he asked.

“Enough,” Nelaid replied, meeting his gaze without flinching. For a moment, they stayed frozen like that, caught in a silent power struggle that no one else could intrude on.

Kit glanced sideways at Nita with a questioning look. She shrugged, feeling just as lost as he was.

“We’ll talk later,” Tom said in a way that left no room for argument.

“For now, let’s discuss the rescue mission.” Miril gave both men a stern look. “There’s good news and bad news. Good news: with the Senate gone, we don’t have to worry about jumping through political hoops anymore to get them back. Bad news: our spy still hasn’t checked in, and it’s safe to say she’s been lost to us.”

“You think she sold you out?” Tom said, folding his arms over his chest.

“No, Lotus Esprit was loyal to us,” Miril said, “If she didn’t tell us about Vader’s plans for us it was only because she didn’t know them, which aligns with what we know about the Empire’s information policy. General Esprit was assigned to the ship in order to move her troops to a new starbase; she had no reason to know about the attack in advance. Vader probably discovered her true loyalties and killed her.”

“That starbase, it’s the same one the ship is heading for?” Tom asked.

“Yes, the _Starsnuffer._ Once we analyze Spot’s data, we will hopefully have a better idea of what we’re up against,” Nelaid said, “But for now, we must make do. The attacks on Lothal have taken up the majority of our Rebel forces, and we can’t rely on their help in the rescue: a tactical move on the Empress’ part, no doubt.”

“Actually, I had an idea,” Tom said, “If the Rodriguezes can be convinced…”

“What?” Kit said. Then, more aggressively, her eyes flashing in sudden understanding, Carmela echoed him. “Are you out of your mind?”

“ _And_ if _I_ can be convinced, Tom,” Nelaid warned, “Whatever it is you are planning, do you truly trust a pair of smugglers over the best fighter pilots of Wellakh?”

“I know your Guarantor training differs from that of the Jedi, but you know as well as I do that there’s no such thing as a coincidence. These people are here for a reason,” Tom said.

“Yeah, it’s called twenty thousand credits,” Carmela snapped, “I’m sorry about your kid and all, but we’ve already done too much here. We’re leaving as soon as we get our money.” Beside her, Kit nodded, though with less vehemence than his sister.

Nelaid hummed in the back of his throat and glanced in Nita's direction. “‘No such thing,’ you say?”

“They all have their reasons to oppose the Empire, and Darth Vader personally,” Tom said.

 _I do?_ Nita thought. The Empire was one thing; nobody liked them. Aunt Annie had always told her that her parents died at the Empire’s hands at the end of the Pullulus Wars, but unless Tom knew something she didn’t, Nita didn’t have any connection to Vader himself. Though, the more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Tom was hiding something. _There’s something weird going on here, and I want to know what it is._

Again, Nita got the impression of watching two people have a conversation through a sound barrier, as Nelaid and Tom silently squared off over the holotable.

“Perhaps,” said the Sunlord, speaking to Carmela now, “You might be persuaded to change your mind if we paid you your twenty thousand credits now, as well as a considerable advance for, say, another two hundred thousand once you get the job done?”

Carmela glared at him. Kit’s eyes lit up.

“Perhaps,” she repeated, glancing over at her brother’s expression and gritting her teeth.

“Kit?” Tom said.

“I’m in if Mela’s in.”

“Nita?”

She thought about running away, catching the first commercial ship out of the system and living anonymously in some remote corner of the galaxy, never worrying about the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire for as long as she lived. She thought about sneaking back to Ireland after a while and finding Aunt Annie again. And she thought about that girl from the hologram, and this Roshaun sitting in a cell somewhere on a Star Destroyer, and the mother and father in front of her trying so hard to keep their composure, and the billions upon trillions of people in the galaxy suffering under the Empire’s rule.

“I’m in.”


	12. History of the Jedi Order: Reppurcussions of the Pullulus Wars

It took hours to plan everything, after which the adults disappeared someplace to talk some more, and Nita went with Kit and Carmela to help get the _Falcon_ ready for the trip. That turned out to be a mistake. Nita could name every star within fifty parsecs of her home, but when it came to star _ships_ she couldn’t tell one lever from another, a fact she discovered the hard way when she almost released one of the escape pods onto the terrace. After that, she and Kit decided that her job would be to hold the tools and hand him things.

Now, since holding things and occasionally passing them to Kit took little effort on her part, Nita found herself floating on the edge of consciousness. She couldn’t even remember when she had last slept. Between Sugarloaf, and hyperspace travel, and the time difference on Wellakh, her internal clock was screwed every which way imaginable, and all the excitement from earlier had begun to catch up with her. As she drifted off, her subconscious spread out, on a whim, like it had done on command earlier. It diffused to encompass the entire ship with all its nuts and bolts, then further outward to the spaceport workers bustled about under Carmela’s order, and beyond that to the very edge of the terrace, where Tom and Nelaid looked out over the plains, discussing… _Was that my name?_

Still half asleep, Nita focused in on their conversation.

“…can’t afford to be kept in the dark,” Tom was saying, “She’s on Ordeal, Nelaid. You know how the Powers work; she _will_ have to confront Vader, and with no knowledge of what she’s getting into if you won’t let me give her all the information.”

“Dairine did all right on her own,” Nelaid said, “I’m sure you sensed as much.”

“It was rather hard to miss,” Tom said dryly, “But Dairine had at least _some_ experience with using the Force beforehand, didn’t she? Nita—”

“Should never have taken the Oath,” Nelaid interrupted with a harshness that would have surprised Nita even if she hadn’t been the topic of discussion. “She wasn’t offered it by the Aethyrs; she was coerced into taking it. That alone makes her susceptible to the Lone One’s influence, and now you think it’s a good idea to throw her, Juanita _Callahan,_ right into _Darth Vader’s_ path? You act as if _you’re_ the one ignorant of who she is!”

“Nelaid—”

“You’re playing right into the Lone One’s plans, taking the girl with you,” Nelaid shouted, “You might as well hand her over on a silver platter—”

“If I told her the truth about Vader, it could prevent that from ever happening!”

“How do you know it wouldn’t do the opposite?”

“She’s a _Callahan_. They—”

“It was a Callahan who—”

“Hey, Nita, pass me that socket wrench.” Kit’s voice snatched her back to the belly of the _Falcon_ , where Kit’s hand reached up from the maintenance hatch. Nita found the tool in question, her pulse racing as she tried to hold onto her mental connection to the argument. Only snatches of it came to her: “Dark Side,” “overshadowed,” and again her name, “Callahan.” She practically threw the wrench at Kit and dived back through the Force to where Tom and Nelaid still spoke.

“ _Enough,_ ” Tom said, radiating weariness through the Force, “Please… just _let me tell her._ ”

“I can’t,” Nelaid sighed, “If Dairine found out…”

“I still don’t understand what would be so terrible about that.”

“It’s too dangerous…”

“Dangerous?” Tom cried, more incredulous than confrontational, “More dangerous than seeking out Darth Vader on her own?”

“Yes it is. The fewer people who know about her parentage, the safer everyone will be,” said Nelaid, “You do not know Dairine. She despises Vader already for what he has done to the galaxy, but if she _knew…_ She would not rest until one or both of them were dead, and if Nita is anything like her sister, she wouldn’t either. Do not argue, Tom; Carl agrees with me on this matter.”

Tom gave a frustrated sigh, and Nita got the impression of a hand running through his hair. “But does he agree with lying to her outright? Breaking one of the most fundamental Jedi laws? I hate to say it, Nelaid, but a lie this big is bound to get the Powers’ attention, and this situation with Dairine and Nita is exactly the sort of thing They—and One of Them in particular—love to arrange.”

A chill ran through the Force, made all the more terrible by the power that lay behind it, and when Nelaid spoke his words were like daggers. “ _Don’t. You. Ever_ insinuate that I am somehow to blame for putting Dairine’s life in danger.”

“That’s not what I—”

“You on your high horse, pretending you and Carl were ever perfect saints when it came to obeying your precious code.”

A pause.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Only that your Order became remarkably adept at subverting your principles during the war. Some of your alleged truths you twisted so thoroughly as to be indiscernible from lies,” Nelaid hissed, “So before you lecture me on my moral dilemmas, I’d advise you to consider your own.”

The burning presence of the Sunlord in the Force swept away in the direction of the ships with one last parting shot. “Don’t tell her, Tom. I would take no pleasure in arresting you.” He left Tom standing alone by the railing.

Nita withdrew her attention in an instant, her mind racing. She wasn’t sure how Force-sensing worked for experienced Jedi, but she suspected it wouldn’t take long for him to notice her eavesdropping now that he didn’t have Nelaid to focus on.

She had no idea how long it took her to notice Kit shouting at her, and it took several more seconds to figure out what he was saying.

“Hey! Hey, are you okay? Nita?”

“What?” she jumped, twisting her head so fast that she got a crick in her neck. Kit had climbed out of the maintenance hatch and was crouching next to her on the grating, frantically shaking her by the arm. “I—yeah, I’m fine,” she said automatically.

_Darth Vader? What are they hiding from me—us? What—_

“Are you sure?” Kit’s worried face swam in front of her eyes. “You kinda blanked out on me for a bit.”

“No, yeah, I’m alright. I… don’t really know what happened there.” It wasn’t technically a lie.

“Okay,” Kit said, though he still sounded worried, “Well, I’m finished up here, and Mela just came in to say she’s done with her bit too.” If Nita had been paying more attention, she would probably be more concerned that she didn’t remember that happening at all. “So, you know, soon as Tom shows up we’ll be ready to take off.”

Nita nodded her acknowledgment, still lost in her head, replaying the argument between the Jedi and the Guarantor over again. She kept coming back to one word:

_Sister?_


	13. Worldgating: An Introduction

Usually the flight from Wellakh to a spot in quadrant 17-F, just shy of the Unknown Regions, takes an Imperial Star Destroyer approximately eight hours to complete—over twice the time of an X-Wing fighter, or certain light freighters. However, when a massive comet cloud moving directly through the Star Destroyer’s path forces it to sublight speed, a Rebel fugitive boards the ship and jettisons a copy of the Star Destroyer’s entire database into space, and the Star Destroyer has to wait around while its troops try to recover the droid holding said database, then those eight hours can more than triple in length.

Dairine knew that. She also knew, through her link to the ship’s electronics, that a stormtrooper on the ground had called in to report the droid’s escape in an unidentified light freighter heading towards the Inner Rim, and that shortly afterwards the Star Destroyer’s engines had switched back from sublight to hyperdrive. 

That had been several hours ago, and only a few hours before the ship exited hyperspace again and docked in the main hangar of the _Starsnuffer_. Now, the faint sound of human voices filtered through Dairine’s cell door, accompanied by the distinctive clomp-clomping of stormtrooper boots against durasteel floor. Her mechanical senses alerted her a millisecond before her ears did when the cell door hissed open. She stood up, determined not to appear weak despite being a prisoner here.

“Come with us,” the lead stormtrooper said. There were five of them, Dairine noticed as she stepped over the raised rim of the doorway, doing her best impression of Roshaun at his most condescending. She could take on the stormtroopers easily even without her lightsaber, but that wasn’t her plan. She had to wait until she found Roshaun and Carl first.

As if on cue, one of the stormtroopers punched in the security code for Roshaun’s cell, and the door flew open. He stood like Dairine did, poised and self-assured, conveying regal disdain in every inch of his posture, despite the Force-suppressors binding his wrists. But Dairine could see through his act to the fear inside, and the silent sigh of relief that Dairine echoed as they set eyes on each other. Underneath his façade, Roshaun looked tired and disheveled, a far cry from his usual appearance. His gauzy overcoat was torn in several places, and an alarmingly crimson substance stained his trousers. But he was alive, and uninjured as far as Dairine could tell, and she didn’t care about anything else.

“Get moving,” barked the stormtrooper behind Dairine. He jabbed her in the back with his blaster barrel, and she stumbled forward. They led her and Roshaun roughly through the halls at blaster-point, turning corner after corner in another attempt to disorient them.

“So, no luck?” Roshaun whispered, just soft enough that the stormtroopers couldn’t hear. His eyes flickered down to Dairine’s hands, held in front of her in the grip of her Force-suppressors. A tiny, glowing filament of electricity still encircled them, identical to the one around Roshaun’s wrists. She had reactivated them back in her cell to avoid suspicion from the guards—or worse, someone like Darth Vader noticing her unrestrained presence in the Force—confident that she could turn them off again at a moment’s notice. But Dairine couldn’t tell Roshaun any of this, so she settled for flashing him one of her signature smiles, her eyes glittering in the harsh overhead light.

“Just follow my lead,” she mouthed back. The grin disappeared faster than it took to blink, leaving Roshaun wondering if he’d seen it at all, or only imagined it.

They kept walking.

This time, Dairine was able to map their path through the Star Destroyer by storing every hallway, turn, and turbolift in the Mobile part of her brain, now that she knew she could. They came to the open loading ramp, wide enough for ten TIE fighters to do tricks along it without crashing into each other. The stormtroopers marched Dairine and Roshaun down it into the hangar.

The main hangar bay on the _Starsnuffer_ was unlike anything Dairine had ever seen. It was built more like one of the Venator-class cruisers of Pullulus War fame, rather than the undercarriage design the Empire currently favored for Star Destroyers. Here, ships had to drop down through a ray-shielded ceiling to land on a long, narrow floor capable of holding a dozen full-sized cruisers end to end, if Dairine’s rough estimations could be trusted. Now, the only other ships in sight were the small fleet of TIE fighters lining the walls like huge, deadly gargoyles waiting to strike any Rebel who dared enter.

 _Like us,_ Dairine thought with a shiver.

An eerie silence blanketed the entire space, turning each step of the stormtroopers’ boots into a sharp stomp, echoing off the walls. Everything about the architecture seemed designed to make its occupants feel small, from the crushing size of the place to the bleak dearth of color. It made Dairine shiver in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature, which was actually surprisingly warm.

She turned her head to look back at the cruiser as they reached the nearer end of the hanger. The distance between her and the ship looked much shorter, and simultaneously much longer, than it had felt to walk it. And something felt off, something more substantial than the sense of dread that had settled in the pit of her stomach the moment she stepped aboard the Star Destroyer. Normally she would call it her Jedi intuition, but with the dampeners cutting her off from the Force, she wasn’t so sure.

A stormtrooper pushed her from behind, and she faced forward and kept walking. They passed through a heavily fortified doorway (if doorway was the right word for something Dairine could fly her X-Wing through) into the starbase proper.

“Tell me I’m not the only one,” Roshaun whispered, “who thought there was something strange about that hangar?”

“Silence,” growled a stormtrooper, but not before Dairine could blurt out, “It’s not circular.”

“Just what do you mean by that?” Roshaun hissed.

“I said _silence_ ,” said the same stormtrooper, giving Roshaun a jab with his blaster.

They fell silent again, but Roshaun continued staring, confused, at Dairine. She shook her head. It wasn’t until he mentioned picking up on the same sense of _wrongness_ from the hanger, like it broke some fundamental rule of space station design, that she managed to place her finger on _why._

To have the drop-down hangar bay design, it would have to be positioned on the upper side of the base, and according to the blueprints she’d downloaded onto Spot, the _Starsnuffer_ was spherical. It would make much more sense architecturally to take advantage of that and make the hangar circular as well, instead of this long, rectangular shape. Unless it wasn’t at the top, but somewhere in the middle, like on that band around the center of the base. But that would mean…

Dairine’s stomach did a flip in her belly. She had been thinking about the _Starsnuffer_ like any other space station, with artificial gravity that gave it an arbitrary ‘up’ and ‘down,’ but this base was over ten times the size of anything ever built by sentients, and it was shaped like a planet.

 _It_ is _a planet,_ she realized, trying to recall the base’s exact dimensions, _It’s, what, the size of a large moon? And all this metal is pretty massive, so that’d increase the surface gravity—well, subsurface gravity—maybe even to Galactic standard… They don’t need to give it an artificial gravity field; it already has its own. It’s an_ artificial planet!

A second thought froze her blood to ice: _It’s an artificial_ weaponized _planet._

The stormtroopers shoved her and Roshaun through another doorway into a large, mostly empty observation deck. Dairine had to blink a few times in response to the dim lighting— _cutting electricity costs or setting the mood, I wonder?—_ and when her eyes got used to it, she could see, backlit by the blinking green and red lights of a row of control consoles, a man in Imperial gray that she instantly recognized from Rebel reports.

“Governor Tarkin,” she said, abandoning her impression of Roshaun to draw from her own contempt for the man who had terrorized countless star systems. “Of course you’re behind this. How much did you have to kiss up to the Empress to get this toy?”

“I for one recognized your foul stench the moment we stepped aboard,” Roshaun said in feigned boredom, “It truly is atrocious. With the budget you must be allowed, you should really invest in better air recycling systems.”

One of their stormtrooper escorts raised the butt of his rifle to hit them again, but Tarkin stopped him with a lazy wave of his hand.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Tarkin sneered at Roshaun, walking towards them. Dairine took a degree of spiteful pleasure in noticing that, in the more direct light, he looked grayer around the edges than his file made him out to be. “In the meantime, I trust you found the… accommodations to your liking?”

“They were lovely,” Roshaun said.

“I especially liked how you could hear it whenever the guards flushed the toilet on their potty break,” Dairine added, “That was a nice touch. Very demeaning.”

Tarkin gave her an insincere smirk faded quickly to another sneer. Shifting abruptly into business mode, he raised his wrist comm to his face and spoke into it. “Commander Tagge, tell Lord Vader we are ready for him.”

Dairine’s heart plummeted to somewhere in the region of her knees at the realization of what was about to happen, but before she could do anything to mentally prepare herself, a door on the far side of the room hissed open.

Darth Vader, unlike Tarkin, was exactly what Alliance intel indicated he would be, from his interstellar-black cape and armor to the sound that accompanied his every breath, like the persistent hiss of background radiation. Dairine knew it was only her own imagination that seemed to warp the air around him, so shadows appeared deeper and light harsher, and she knew it was experience, not her stifled Jedi senses, that told her of the piercing cold cloaking him in the Force.

This was the Dark Side in its purest form. This was the Lone Power. This was the man who killed the Jedi.

A spike of fury flushed out her fear, and she felt her control slipping. Roshaun reached out to brush the back of his hand against her arm, a silent warning and gesture of support rolled into one. She took a deep breath and tried to think of water flowing over her head, washing away all the spiteful comments she wanted to make.

“Fairest and Fallen,” Roshaun said, his head high and his voice clear, “greeting, and defiance.”

Vader strode into the room, and Dairine knew if she could access the Force she would feel its chill move with him. “After four years without meeting an emissary of the Light, it is the _Guarantor_ who has to give me the proper Jedi courtesy,” he said, “What _has_ your Master been teaching you, Miss Dairine?”

All thoughts of restraint left her mind, and her hands flew immediately to the belt clip where she usually stored her lightsaber, forgetting for a second that the stormtroopers had taken it when they captured her. “You…” she spat, searching the depths of her vocabulary for the worst, most vicious swears to fling at him. But the words died in her throat when the door opened again.

There, framed for a moment in the crisscrossed blast door before being pushed roughly into the room, was Carl. If Roshaun looked worn down, Carl looked practically dead on his feet. He showed no signs of physical injury, but that meant little when Imperial mind probe torture was involved. Sweat shone on his skin, making his hair clump together in strings and the filmy sleeves of his tunic stick to his arms. Angry red bands outlined the Force-dampeners on his wrists, and the ever-present spark in his eyes was nowhere to be seen. He looked defeated. Broken. For a split second before he looked up, Dairine felt her own hope die.

For as long as she could remember, Carl had always been a reassuring presence in her life, in all their lives. Something about him—maybe his Jedi upbringing, or his soldier’s confidence left over from the Pullulus War, or something entirely different and uniquely Carl—but something about him put everyone at ease in a way no one else could. Not Nelaid with his cold politician’s logic; not Miril with her legion of spies always bringing bad news; not Roshaun, as hard as he tried to win their people’s love and respect; certainly not Dairine herself, no matter how much knowledge she soaked up into her memory. Dairine had grown up knowing that as long as Carl was there, everything would be okay. He could fix it, no matter what “it” turned out to be. Carl hadn’t been there when she found Spot and flew off into Wild Space on her Ordeal, but he had been there afterwards. To fix things. To help her through the backlash of her connection with the Mobiles and teach her the ways of the Force, so she could become a proper Jedi. No matter how hard things got, he never gave up.

But now…

The second passed. Carl saw Vader in front of the string of consoles lining the viewport, and beyond him, Dairine and Roshaun. And all the pain and exhaustion melted from his face, as if it had never been there in the first place, as if it didn’t take all his remaining energy to shuck it off. Nothing about him really changed, but he seemed to stand taller, and he began to radiate, not his usual calm reassurance in the Force, but something colder, more intimidating. He wasn’t the friendly Advisor who told bad jokes and great stories anymore; he was the Jedi Master, the general, the war hero striking fear in the hearts of the Old Republic’s enemies.

For a fraction of an instant, Dairine almost felt sorry for Vader.

That passed as well.

Carl walked calmly to stand next to Dairine and Roshaun, paying no attention to the stormtroopers who had brought him here. He stared straight into the eyes of Vader’s mask.

“Dairine, Roshaun,” he said, though his gaze didn’t move, “Are you alright? Have they hurt you?”

“No, sir,” said Roshaun.

“I’m fine,” said Dairine. Carl’s eyes flickered in her direction, flashing her a version of the same icy glare he was giving Vader, and Dairine tried not to cringe at the thought of how much trouble she would be in when they got home. _If_ they got home. She pushed that thought out of her mind.

“If you think harming the two of them will have any effect on what you get out of me, you couldn’t be more wrong,” Carl told Vader, his voice harsh and unforgiving, so different from how he normally sounded.

At first, Darth Vader didn’t respond; he stood completely still, inscrutable under the mask.  Then suddenly his breathing changed, turning to a low rumbling deep in his chest and scaling upward in volume. The sound was all too familiar to Dairine: the same sound had dogged her all throughout her Ordeal, and even now haunted some of her worst nightmares. Darth Vader, the Lone Power, was _laughing._

“Your bravado fools no one, Romeo,” he said, “Fortunately—or unfortunately, you may find—that is not my plan.” He raised his hand, and Dairine felt her blood boil when she saw Carl flinch, but Vader only flicked his fingers in the direction of the control consoles. Behind them, the wide floor-to-ceiling viewport went opaque, and a glowing diagram appeared on its surface. Dairine recognized it immediately; she had, after all, downloaded it onto Spot only yesterday.

“Do you know what this is?” Vader said, staring straight at Dairine and, it felt, into her very soul. She tried not to squirm.

“It’s the design for this space station,” she said, “The _Starsnuffer_.”

Carl and Roshaun both twitched almost imperceptibly at her deliberate mention of the name, but Dairine ignored them. Thanks to Miril’s spy network, the Alliance had known of the _Starsnuffer’s_ existence for many years now, almost as long as the Empire had existed, but despite their best efforts, the only concrete intelligence anyone could uncover about the superweapon was its name. With each new whisper that reached Miril’s ears, she become increasingly concerned, both due to the rumors that came with them and the fearful reverence with which Imperial officers seemed to regard the word. None of Miril’s informants had ever made it off this base alive to report anything else, least of all what it looked like.

“But do you know what it _is_?” Vader asked. She shook her head, refusing to rise to the bait.

He waved his hand again, and the display zoomed in on the base, stripping through the outer layer of durasteel to the floors beneath, then deeper still. Stats flashed by on the edges of the screen, detailing artificial gravity fields (minimal, as Dairine had guessed, and only on the outermost floors), temperature readouts, and other such things. A hundred or so levels deep, where the planet’s natural gravity pushed the upper limits of Galactic Standard, a thick layer of heavy shielding separated the outer section of the starbase from the energy generators making up the “mantle.” The scrolling Aurabesh on the side began showing pressure readings and energy outputs so extreme Dairine almost couldn’t believe her eyes. She shuddered to think what even a ship of this size would need so much power for.

All this flashed by in only a few seconds, before the display settled at the very center of the _Starsnuffer,_ in its core. Now it showed a roiling mass of rainbow lines and planes in constant, twisting motion, tagged with transparent markers indicating velocities in many more dimensions than the standard three. It looked like a tangled ball of yarn and a crumpled up flimsi had collided into one and flirted too closely with the event horizon of a black hole. Dairine couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“No,” Carl whispered, quietly enough that Dairine almost missed it. Then, louder, “That can’t possibly—the technology doesn’t—and you don’t have enough Inquisitors to—” He tore his eyes away from the display to stare at Vader again. “You’re insane.”

“Wait, what is it?” Roshaun asked, as Vader laughed.

Dairine squinted at the screen, trying to make sense of the words rolling up its side. She saw things like ‘phase relationships,’ ’tonal frequency,’ ‘exotic matter counts,’ and… _Oh._ ‘Hyperstring patency settings.’

“This entire station is a gigantic remote worldgate generator,” Carl said. His voice sounded distant. Monotone. “One large enough to not collapse if you stuck an end in, say, the core of a star. Dump the other end over a highly populated area, and it becomes an instant WMD of planetary proportions.”

Beside Dairine, Roshaun paled.

A worldgate generator. Carl had partially specialized in worldgate mechanics before the Purge killed everyone who had any experience with them, and he’d taught Dairine a little of what he knew as well. Even a single worldgate took an incredible amount of precision and skill in the Force to control. Large gates, like what the _Starsnuffer_ must be equipped to handle, would be nearly impossible for one person to handle alone, even for someone as powerful as a Sith Lord directly controlled by the Lone Power.

Carl was thinking along the same lines. “You can’t possibly fuel this on your own, not without killing your host. I know how overshadowing works,” he said, “Is this what you’ve done with all the Force-sensitives that go missing? Why kill them when you can cage them up here to power your superweapon, right?”

Another rumble of cold laughter emanated from Vader. “As amusing as it is that you immediately assumed I’m using kidnapped child slaves to achieve my nefarious ends, in this case, you’re wrong,” he said, “I have no need for slaves on this space station. This worldgate generator runs entirely on technological innovation.”

“That’s…” Carl shook his head. “You’re lying. That sort of engineering is still years away from practical use. Even Rirhath B hasn’t made any breakthroughs yet. It’s not possible to create an artificial worldgate without using the Force, let alone with enough accuracy to weaponize it.”

But Dairine wasn’t so sure. It would certainly explain the energy expenditure she’d seen on the viewscreen, and if it was true that the _Starsnuffer_ had been in the making since before the Pullulus War ended, there would have been more than enough time to develop the necessary technology in secret. Dairine watched Carl’s face fall as he came to the exact same realization.

“How?” he whispered, almost pleading.

“Do you really expect me to tell you _all_ my secrets?” Vader said.

“Then why tell us any?” Dairine asked, though she had a horrible suspicion she knew the answer already.

“I’m planning to kill you, of course. That was never a question. But I didn’t explain all of this to you only to gloat,” Vader said. He strode forward with his hands clasped behind his back, until he stood directly in front of them. His gaze swept over each of them in turn, and Dairine’s breath caught in her throat as it passed over her and onto Roshaun.

“I told you what the _Starsnuffer_ can do so that you know _exactly_ what I am capable of inflicting on your home planet if you disobey me. Without moving half a parsec from here, I can take matter from the heart of a neutron star and place it in Wellakh’s core. I can flood your palace with molten magma from the lava fields of Mustafar. I can fling every single person that you hold dear over the event horizon of a black hole, and I will make you watch each excruciating second of it, with the knowledge that you could have prevented their deaths if only you had done what I ordered.” His attention was all on Roshaun now, towering over the prince. Roshaun’s skin turned chalk white, his eyes wide in fear. He took a subconscious step back.

“I will only ask you this once, Guarantor,” Vader said, appearing somehow to loom taller and taller with every word he spoke. “Where is the Rebel base?”

Roshaun opened his mouth immediately to give the standard lie. “Wellakh isn’t a part of the Rebellion. I have no knowledge of—”

The glove shot out in an instant, too quickly for Dairine to stop it, or for Carl’s aborted lunge to have any effect. Vader reached for Roshaun’s throat… and stopped a foot away from it.

Roshaun flinched, but nothing else happened.

“I wouldn’t finish that sentence if I were you,” Vader hissed, barely louder than his own rasping breath.

 A rush of air escaped Roshaun’s lungs, and he tripped back another step. Dairine reached out to steady him with one of her bound hands, a mirror of his earlier gesture. He gulped, trying to regain his earlier composure.

“You are a Guarantor, remember,” Vader said. His voice had changed. It was still at the same volume, but softer, almost gentle in a way that crawled across Dairine’s skin. Roshaun couldn’t look him in the eyes, and instead stared past him to the swirling display on the viewscreen. “Your duty is, first and foremost, to protect your own planet. In the past, it may have been from your star, but isn’t this star _base_ the same thing?”

“You’re using fusion reactors to power the gate. I saw it when everything was flashing by on the viewscreen,” Roshaun explained, sounding deader than Carl had earlier.

 _What does that have anything to do with…?_ Oh. _Fusion. It’s_ not _a planet._

“It’s a star,” he said, “You built your very own star, and now you’re going to kill Wellakh with it. Thousands of years of Guarantors reigning over the planet, and we were worried about the wrong star.”

“Yes, I thought you would appreciate the irony,” said Vader, “But it doesn’t have to be that way, not if you make the right decision now. _Answer the question_.”

Roshaun turned to Vader with hatred in his eyes, opened his mouth again… and faltered.

“ _No,”_ Dairine whispered, “No, Roshaun, what are you _doing_?”

He stared down at his feet and squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t have a choice,” he pleaded, “I _can’t_ be the Guarantor who lets Wellakh die, Dairine.”

“Carl, tell him he—” she spun around, but Carl had his head down and his eyes closed as well, resigned to whatever fate had in store. She wanted to shake them both by the shoulders until sense rattled loose in their brains. She wanted to tear off her dampener cuffs and beat each and every Imperial officer over the head with them. But she did neither of those things.

“Dantooine,” Roshaun said, “It’s on Dantooine.”

The base was not on Dantooine.

Relief welled up inside Dairine’s chest, but she shoved it back down, forced it into a tiny box that it couldn’t escape from. The last thing she needed right now was for Vader to read her emotions and realize Roshaun had lied to him.

“Very well,” Vader said. He turned to Tarkin, who had blended so well into the shadows that both Dairine and Roshaun had forgotten he was still in the room. “Governor, give the order to have Wellakh destroyed.”

“What? _No!”_ Roshaun shouted, while at the same time, Dairine lunged forward, screaming, “You promised—!” Carl didn’t react at all, and Dairine had to wonder if he’d predicted this from the moment he knew what the _Starsnuffer_ could do.

Tarkin gave a curt nod, paying no heed to their distress. He raised his wrist to his chin and keyed in a frequency on his comlink.

Just as he drew a breath to begin speaking, the doors opened, and an Imperial officer sporting an impressively awful pair of sideburns marched into the room. Vader spun around, ready to strangle whoever interrupted them.

“My Lord, I have a full report of the droid’s escape,” the officer said, his voice wavering when he saw how furious Vader was, “We know who smuggled it off the planet.”

The air seemed to shiver around Vader in response to his rage, and his hands curled into shaking fists at his sides. No one fell to the ground clutching their throat, but the officer—a commander, judging by his insignia—looked nervous at the possibility.

“Fine,” Vader snapped, “I shall deal with this presently.”

“Sir, what should I—?” Tarkin asked.

“Wait until I get back.” Vader stormed out the door, his cape billowing behind him.

This time, Dairine could have collapsed from her relief, and judging by the looks on Roshaun and Carl’s faces, they could as well. But in the seconds after Vader left the room, her mind began racing.

 _I can’t just get us off the station anymore,_ she thought, _I have to make sure it’s destroyed. No matter what._


	14. The Lone Power

Dairine waited for ten seconds after the blast doors shut behind Vader. She glanced around, checking to make sure the Imperials wouldn’t see what she was about to do. Tarkin was busy on the comm with one of the communications officers, and Dairine knew from experience that the stormtroopers would be oblivious even if they didn’t wear masks that obscured their vision.

She got Roshaun and Carl’s attention with subtle nudges of her elbows, and then she glanced down at her hands. With the index finger of one hand, she tapped the dampener cuff around the opposite wrist. Their eyes widened ever so slightly, and as they both twitched their heads in a nod, she pressed three fingers against her wrist… two fingers… one.

As she folded the last finger into her fist, many things happened at once.

Tarkin glanced in Dairine’s direction, glanced away, and then did a double take. Three pairs of dampener cuffs deactivated and dropped to the ground a split second before Tarkin’s panicked cry of, “Stop them!” could have any effect. The Force rushed back into the prisoners with all the strength of a damn breaking, setting every cell alight with power. Without consulting with each other, the three of them all clamped down on it again, before Darth Vader could sense the brief, unshielded surge in the Force.

Stormtroopers all around them raised their blasters, and suddenly the room was lit with flashing red plasma bolts. Dairine drew on the Force to duck and dodge and weave around them all. Roshaun, more accustomed to fighting sans lightsaber than her, twisted blasters in the stormtroopers’ hands to turn their deadly fire on each other. Moving herself back-to-back with Roshaun, Dairine copied him.

“What’s the plan, Dairine?” Roshaun shouted over the whine of blasterfire.

“Don’t die,” Dairine said. She dodged one stormtrooper’s swing at her head and kicked him away from her.

Another stormtrooper lunged at Roshaun. “There isn’t any way that could go wrong,” he muttered, as he Force-flung the stormtrooper into one of his colleagues.

“Well, I think it’s a great plan,” Carl said without a hint of sarcasm, “I’ve done more with less.”

“What could possibly be less than ‘don’t die?’” Roshaun decided he really didn’t want to know the answer to that as he ducked another blaster bolt, fired from his left.

While he and Dairine gravitated together on the defensive, Carl leapt straight into the fray. He lunged at the nearest stormtrooper, twitching the man’s blaster a centimeter to the right as he did so. The shot that would have torn straight through Carl’s torso hit harmlessly on the far wall. Before the stormtrooper could react—or the one next to him, who tried to shoot at Dairine and suddenly found his rifle scorching to the touch—Carl wrenched the blaster out of his hands and slammed it up underneath his helmet, into his neck. As the stormtrooper dropped to the floor, Carl spun and shot the second stormtrooper with one hand, using the other to blast away another who tried sneaking up behind him. He spun around again—

—And froze, as he felt the cold, unmistakable pressure of a blaster barrel pressing into his back. Much smaller than the standard-issue rifles the stormtroopers all carried, this blaster was about the right size for the kind of slim holdout pistol that a certain type of person might keep hidden in their sleeve. The same type of person who might rise the ranks of the military to become a Grand Moff.

“Everybody. Stop. Fighting,” Tarkin said, his voice quiet, yet clear enough to be easily heard above the blasterfire. The remaining stormtroopers, all six of them, lowered their weapons, and Dairine and Roshaun slowly turned to see Tarkin holding Carl at blasterpoint with the slimy smile of a spider who’s just ensnared a fly in its web.

“ _No,”_ Dairine whispered, her blood chilling at the sight. Her plan—or what little she had of one—depended on them quickly overwhelming the guards and fleeing, before Vader found them. Every second they spent trapped in the observation deck was another second he could walk back through that door. Without their lightsabers, against Vader, she and Carl wouldn’t stand a chance, and Roshaun couldn’t go up against him alone either. This wasn’t like the last time she had faced the Lone Power; she didn’t have the raw power at her disposal anymore to do what she had done then, and even if she did, she suspected a second attempt might kill her.

“If either of you move a muscle, I’ll put a blaster bolt through your friend’s spine,” Tarkin said in that same calm, crystalline tone of his. Dairine didn’t doubt his sincerity. Then, addressing Carl, he said, “Drop the blaster and kick it away from you. There’s a good Jedi.” Carl did as he was ordered, and the rifle he had stolen skittered across the floor, to be picked up by a stormtrooper standing off to the side. Tarkin gestured at another stormtrooper with his free hand, then at the ground, where the discarded dampener cuffs still lay. “Stun the girl and cuff them all. We can’t have you running off again before Darth Vader can _properly_ interrogate you, now can we?”

Dairine glared at Tarkin, but it wasn’t the glare of cold indifference that Carl had faced Vader with earlier. Hers was the look of a cornered animal that had run out of options long ago, and was lashing out in the only way it could. As the stormtrooper reached down to pick up the dampener cuffs, the fingers of Dairine’s right hand twitched as she envisioned wiping that simpering little smile off of Tarkin’s face with a blast of Force strong enough to drive him straight through the row of control consoles behind him…

Carl’s eyes flashed a warning at her, as her murderous mood reached him through their training bond. _A Jedi doesn’t dwell on anger,_ his voice whispered in her ear, though whether she was ‘hearing’ him now or merely remembering a time he had said it, she didn’t know or truly care. Her face flushed in embarrassment, and she lowered her head, eyes squeezed tight in an effort to wrangle her emotions under control.

 _What’s the point?_ She wanted to scream. _We don’t have_ time _for this!_

A gentle nudge in the Force brought her head back up, and, beside her, Roshaun’s as well. Carl met her gaze again, and this time, instead of rebuke, his eyes held the faintest twinkle of a smile.

He had a plan.

A second later, he passed it through their training bond, and it solidified between them. She passed it on to Roshaun, and he gave a tiny twitch of his head for confirmation.

All this happened in the time it took for the stormtrooper Tarkin had tasked with restraining the three of them to straighten up with the dampener cuffs. Simultaneously, Dairine, Roshaun, and Carl opened themselves to the Force. They had no need for further communication, or even thought; they simply moved as one, placing all their trust in the Force. Their escape ended as it had begun, with many things happening at once.

Carl’s hand, hanging casually at his side, twitched closed. Dairine and Roshaun took up stances back-to-back again and outstretched their arms. Tarkin’s pistol crumpled in on itself. The Force built in around the two Wellakhit, charging. Carl spun around before Tarkin had a chance to act, and he jabbed two fingers against the Grand Moff’s forehead. A surge of Force burst out from Dairine and Roshaun, blasting the last stormtroopers into the walls with a loud _crack._

Tarkin collapsed to the floor in a deep sleep.

And the three escaped prisoners ran out the door Dairine and Roshaun had entered through, back toward the hangar, as if Darth Vader himself was chasing after them.

* * *

Darth Vader led Commander Tagge down four corridors and around two corners before spinning around to face him, taking no chances that the prisoners in the observation deck could hear.

“My Lord, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were in the middle of something. Next time—” Tagge stammered.

“There will not be a ‘next time,’” said Vader, “Consider yourself lucky that I didn’t kill you on the spot. What is your report?”

Tagge nodded frantically, wringing his hands around a tightly rolled tube of flimsi sheets. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. My men have identified the ship the droid escaped in, which is apparently a smuggling vessel run by two chocolate dealers. It’s a Corellian light freighter, sir. A modified YT-Edsel model reported stolen about, ah…” In a twitchy motion, he unrolled his flimsis and squinted at the writing on the top sheet. “Four years ago, sir, after the Battle of Corellia.”

Vader made a pensive noise at the back of his throat.

“Is that important, sir?” Tagge asked. He shrunk back, fearing what might happen to him if either answer proved true.

“No. Carry on with your report.” Vader dismissed it with a wave of his hand.

It was important, actually, but Tagge didn’t need to know that. First Romeo came back from the dead, and now a connection to Mladen showed up with his padawan’s droid. Could she…? No, she was dead; Vader had felt the life drain out of her himself. No one could survive a lightsaber through the heart.

“Yes, sir. Carrying on, sir. Right away, s—hrrk!” Tagge clutched suddenly at his throat, terror spilling off him in a continuous crescendo, singing its note high and clear in the Force. From feet away, Vader tightened his grip on the man’s windpipe.

“Quit your incessant prattling and get on with it!” the Lone Power snapped, allowing his anger to creep into his tone. As much as he normally relished the way these pathetic mortals groveled and cowered before him, ten-plus years spent in the same body could take the edge off of anything, and this situation with the Wellakhit girl was pushing his patience past its limits.

He released his fist, and Tagge slumped backwards, stumbling against the wall behind him. Vader waited impatiently for him to regain his breath.

“Right, yes.” Tagge shuffled his flimsis and cleared his throat. “Also accompanying the smugglers are a teenage girl who found the droid, according to her aunt…”

The Lone Power froze. With sudden clarity running like water down his host’s spine, he knew who this girl was.

“Her name is… um…” Tagge squinted at his flimsis again, shooting fearful glances up at Vader as he struggled to find the name. “Callahan,” he said finally, “Juanita Callahan.”

Of course. Everything was falling into place now. The other Powers had finally showed their hand. Following the cataclysmic defeat during the younger girl’s Ordeal, the Lone One had grown anxious by Their total silence. It had become a stalemate, with each side waiting for the other to make a move, and now the One and Its pantheon finally had. They thought to shove Dairine and Nita onto a collision course, spiraling the two around each other and tweaking events to turn their inevitable impact into the Lone One’s final defeat. After all, if one sibling alone could deal him such a devastating blow, what could the two of them together do?

But it was too little too late. Vader already had Dairine in his grasp, and before the day’s end he will have crushed all the careful schemes of Those aligned with the so-called light side.

Meanwhile, Tagge still had his ill-timed report to give. “My Lord, I want to say that I’m just the messenger here. I don’t—”

Vader crossed his arms in silent warning.

“Yes, sir. She had a – a laser sword, like…” Tagge’s eyes flickered to the lightsaber at Vader’s hip, and he gulped. “They both did, sir. She and the other man.”

This changed everything. That Nita had already built her lightsaber meant must she have been trained in the Force, perhaps for much longer than Dairine had. Nita wasn’t the Powers’ last-ditch hope to tip the balance back in Their favor; she was Their sleeper agent.

The Lone One should have seen this coming. He had assumed, erroneously he now realized, that she would be safely out of the way on that little backwater planet. Her aunt would provide all the inadvertent help she could to dissuade Nita from exploring her Force sensitivity; after what her brother’s affiliation with the Jedi did to him, she would have no love for the Order, and she’d pass that on to his daughter. But the Lone One never accounted for another Jedi seeking her out, and with Mladen dead, and Romeo here on the _Starsnuffer,_ that meant only one other person knew of her existence.

“Swale,” he whispered.

Tagge blanched and shuffled his flimsis again. “How did you…?”

“Never mind how I know,” Vader said, spinning around to face back into the hallway that led to the observation deck, “That doesn’t concern you.” He marched down the corridor as quickly as he could without running, too absorbed in his own racing thoughts to notice Tagge jogging behind him to keep up. He should have realized Tom had survived the moment he stepped aboard the Wellakhit convoy and felt Carl’s presence in a flicker of unguarded thought. They had to be colluding with each other. Wherever one could be found, the other was never far behind, and it was the Lone One’s own arrogance that made him forget that.

Unless… Unless the other Powers That Be had purposefully obscured events from him, just as he had once done to them. But no, that would be impossible. The balance of the Force was tipped entirely to the dark side. They wouldn’t have the power to deceive him like that.

In any case, he needed to finish this business with Dairine quickly before dealing with Tom and Nita. Without waiting to reach the observation deck, he drew his comlink from a pocket in his uniform and spoke into it. “Tarkin, I want that planet destroyed, now. And the Jedi executed. I don’t care how, but get it done quickly.” He took his thumb off the talk button and paused, waiting for Tarkin to respond.

Nothing. He stopped in his tracks and tried again, ignoring Tagge’s panicked squeak as he tried not to crash into Vader’s back. Still, Tarkin gave no answer.

Vader continued towards the observation deck with renewed speed, flashing past hallway after hallway with Tagge jogging in his wake. Hanging in the stale, recycled air surrounding them, the Force screamed its belated warning, and the Lone One cursed the limitations physicality placed on his powers. If he wasn’t stuck here in linear time, he would have foreseen whatever had happened to Tarkin. He _should_ have foreseen it.

With ten feet still left between him and the observation deck, Vader blew the door open with a single swipe of his hand. He reached the doorway and slowed down, taking in the scene within. Stormtroopers were strewn about the edges of the room, where they’d been thrown by a powerful blast. The Lone One recognized the Force signature, like scorched metal, left by the girl, and a similarly distinctive feel of stellar fire, which could only be the Guarantor. Tarkin lay slumped among the stormtroopers, unconscious but still alive, spared by that most pathetic emotion the Jedi called "compassion." Vader didn’t bother reviving the Grand Moff. He could deal with Tarkin’s failure later. Now, he had more pressing matters to attend to.

Of the prisoners themselves, the only proof that they had been there at all were the three pairs of deactivated dampener cuffs lying in silent mockery beside one of the fallen stormtroopers. Vader stood above them, surrounded on all sides by soldiers just beginning to stir, and slowly his hands clenched into fists. Panting slightly, Commander Tagge reached the room’s entrance and paused, leaving only the steady rasp of Vader’s respirator to pierce the silence.

Suddenly, Tagge’s wristcom chimed. He jumped and fumbled to accept the comm, his motions frantic in terror of drawing Vader’s attention, but the Sith gave no indication that he had even heard the interruption.

“Yes, what is it?” he snapped, forgetting the protocol response for a moment.

There was a pause, then the woman on the other end answered. _“Sir, the scanners have picked up an unidentified vessel approaching from our starboard side. It’s not responding to any hailing frequencies, and all signs indicate it’s floating dead in space. What do you recommend we do?”_

Tagge glanced at Vader, who still stood with his back to the door, unmoving. “Any life signs onboard?”

 _“No, sir,”_ the woman, who Tagge realized he had forgotten to identify before he answered the comm, said, “ _We wondered if it might be pirates. They’ve been known to cloak their life signs and pose as ghost ships before._ ”

“If it’s a Tawalf ship, that’s probably it,” Tagge said, still eyeing Vader warily.

“ _The ship is Corellian, not Tawalf.”_ Vader’s head rose a fraction of a centimeter. “ _A YT-Edsel light freighter.”_

Vader did not choke Commander Tagge to death; he flung him headfirst into the viewscreen. There was a sickening crack as the commander’s head collided with the transparisteel, and he tumbled to the floor. With calm, deliberate movements, Vader picked his way around over stormtroopers to where Tagge fell. He stooped down and yanked the comlink off Tagge’s sleeve.

The anxious voice on the other end could still be heard, growing less tinny and distorted as he brought the comm closer. _“Sir? Commander, do you read me? Are you still there?”_

Without bothering with explanations or introductions, knowing she would need neither, Vader spoke into the comm. “Lock onto the freighter with a tractor beam, and don’t let any other ships enter or leave the station. I want to inspect this vessel myself.”

He dropped the comlink on the former commander’s body without waiting for a reply and set out to find his escaped prisoners.


	15. The Cosmic Force: An Introduction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I am so very sorry about the delay for this chapter. But, on the plus side, I got such bad writer's block on this one that I procrastinated by writing the entire next chapter instead, so that should be up before too long as well!
> 
> Also, thank you for all the awesome people who've commented recently and reminded me that I needed to get my act together and power through this already :)
> 
> (And yes, Carmela does know the plural form of Jedi is still Jedi. She just likes being a little shit about things)

“If this is the kind of plan you Jedis always come up with,” Carmela muttered, “it’s no wonder you lost the war.”

With the four of them pressed tightly together in an escape pod designed to only accommodate two or three people, Nita was hyperaware of the way Kit’s muscles tensed against her side in anticipation of another verbal sparring match. But most of Carmela’s initial resentment seemed to have faded away, leaving behind only low-level friction. Kit must have realized this, because a second later he relaxed again.

“Oh, no, compared to some I’ve heard, this is practically sane,” Tom said on Nita’s other side. Once again, Spot perched on his lap with all its eyes alert and twisting to look in every nook and cranny in the pod. “When we find him, you should ask Carl about the time he escaped an army of hostile Tharks using only a thoat and the Barsoomian Senator’s pet scorpion.”

“You know, for a former general, you’re really bad at inspiring confidence in people,” Carmela said with a fake smile.

Like most escape pods, this one had little in the way of steering capabilities, but Carmela piloted it expertly from the cramped seat at the front, never letting the pod drift far enough above or away from the _Falcon_ for the _Starsnuffer’s_ scanners to pick it up as a separate vehicle.

“By the way, if this nerf-brained scheme of yours gets my ship destroyed, I _will_ stab you with your own scientifically improbable laser sword,” Carmela added.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tom said, “as well as your seven other suggestions for what to do with my lightsaber if I let anything happen to the _Falcon._ ”

“Glad to know we’re on the same page.”

Spot’s disk drive let out a scratchy buzzing sound in an excellent approximation of human exasperation.

Kit and Nita glanced at each other at the same time, and despite everything—despite the danger they were in, despite how woefully unprepared she felt, despite the fact that she hadn’t managed to catch nearly enough sleep on the flight here, and what little she did get was filled with dreams of lightning and fireballs scorching through her skin—Nita felt the absurd urge to laugh.

That urge went away as quickly as she looked out the tiny viewport and saw the _Starsnuffer_ looming underneath them, like a vast, craggy prairie of durasteel: flat, and unrelenting, and consuming her entire field of vision. The only break in the starkness came from the thick chasm stretching off over the horizon on either side, glowing red from the ray shield at its bottom. The _Falcon,_ dwarfed to insignificance beside it, drifted ever closer to the edge.

Kit shivered against Nita’s arm.

“Me too,” she whispered, too softly for Tom or Carmela to hear. She met Kit’s gaze again out of the corner of her eye, and this time the smiles they gave each other were of feeble reassurance.

Below their feet, the _Falcon_ began gliding out over that blood-red abyss that wasn’t, Nita had to remind herself, anything more than a docking bay, and not the hungry, gaping maw her imagination made it out to be. It didn’t help that the tractor beam trained on the _Falcon_ chose that moment to shift to a steeper angle, sending a shuddering, gut-wrenching jolt through the escape pod, like a Nubian sea monster snagging its teeth on the pilot fish of its latest victim. The _Falcon_ descended into the rift.

As soon as the ship was level with the top of the cliff, Carmela leapt into action, her hands flying over the controls as she reversed the thrusters, fighting to escape the fringes of the tractor beam. The pod shot backwards over the top of the _Falcon,_ its engine screaming in protest. Every bone in Nita’s body rattled in sync with the pod, and for one terrible second she thought its durasteel shell would tear itself apart at the seams.

And then they were free, darting away from the trench at a speed that turned the _Starsnuffer’s_ surface, mere meters below them, into a blur. Nita could feel the tension physically drain from Kit’s shoulders as Carmela let out a triumphant shout, and Nita worked to let her own stiffness do the same.

“See? Piece of cake!” Without turning to look, Carmela reached one arm behind her and smacked Kit lightly on the arm, “And you thought I couldn’t do it… tsk tsk, El Niño.”

Kit smacked her hand away, grumbling, “I never said that.” Nita decided now wasn’t the time to ask about the nickname.

“Alright, Jedi, it’s your turn now,” Carmela said. She kept her voice light, but the Force betrayed her anxiety. Now, before they could smuggle themselves aboard the _Starsnuffer,_ they had to find a place to land their pod. Nita had assumed this step of the process would be simple—and comparatively, it was—but even it had the potential to kill them.

Boarding the _Starsnuffer_ wasn’t _,_ as Carmela had explained, like boarding any other ship. Her escape pod, specially designed by pirates for that purpose (and probably stolen from pirates as well, judging by the way Kit skirted around the subject) couldn’t cut through a hull as thick as the _Starsnuffer’s_ , which meant they had to rely on Tom and Nita’s lightsabers to get them inside. Even then, if they landed in a place where the durasteel was thicker than about a meter, or if they landed on top of a wall, or if they landed on top of a room full of Stormtroopers, then they would most likely die.

There wouldn’t be any second chances for them once they cut into the bottom of the escape pod, so they had to make absolutely certain they got it right on the first try.

The only way to ensure that, according to Tom and Nelaid, was to use the Force, a prospect that made Carmela understandably uneasy. It had taken several minutes of arguing to persuade Carmela to go along with this plan at all, and even then she made it clear that if anything went wrong she would take over from them.

Now, Tom closed his eyes and let his lungs empty in one long, slow breath. “You remember what to do?" he asked Carmela.

"Of course I do," she said, with a prickle of irritation. She touched the escape pod's controls, and it slowed its mad dash over the base and began circling in a wide holding pattern instead. Now when Nita looked out the window, she could clearly see the irregularities in the Starsnuffer's surface: square-shaped patterns and jutting towers that must have made sense to the designers of this death star, but only reminded Nita of what she thought Coruscant might look like flattened out. It wasn’t a comparison she liked to make, for Coruscant’s sake.

Kit shivered.

Still with his eyes closed, Tom slowly reached out a hand in front of him, palm face-down, fingers splayed but relaxed. Nita felt the Force stir around him. "Nita," he said, "Are you ready?"

Nita started to nod, then realized that wouldn't do any good when Tom had his eyes closed. "Yes," she said.

She was not ready.

"It's fine if you don't feel like you are. Everyone feels that way at first," Tom said, a small smile playing across his face, as if he’d read her mind, "Just remember what I taught you on the ship. This is exactly like deflecting that security droid."

She remembered him telling her how to "sink into the Force" and "let the Force guide her," but now, so far from the relative safety of the _Falcon_ , and facing the very real threat of death, the words meant little to her. Here under the too-bright lights of the escape pod, that sensation of being one with her surroundings and with the security droid felt as foreign as the Sidhe did back home, and the voice that had whispered in her head felt like a distant dream. It didn't seem possible, what Tom was asking her to do.

But she knew she had to try. She took a deep gulp of air—either to steel herself or postpone the moment of her inevitable failure, she wasn't quite sure—and closed her own eyes and reached out her hand in a mirror image of Tom.

If focusing had proved difficult on the ship, here it was nearly impossible. With Kit squeezed uncomfortably close against her left side, and Tom on her right, even the slightest twitch made her feel self-conscious, and the way Kit’s nervous foot tapping sent tiny tremors through his leg and into hers ruled out any chance of a distraction-free environment.

Actually, the very fact that Kit _was_ nervously tapping his foot ruled that out. It was a constant reminder that even the loosely defined professionals felt out of their depths, and what chance did a young farm girl who’d never been off-planet before have against that?

 _Oh no you don’t,_ she scolded herself, as her throat began to close up in fear, _If you start thinking like that, everything really_ will _fall apart. Get a grip on yourself!_

Forcing down the lump in her throat, Nita took another deep breath and let it out again, imagining her senses flowing outward with the oxygen, exactly like she had on the _Falcon._ The three flaming bundles of emotion that were her crewmates’ signatures in the Force immediately flared in her mind’s eye, and a few seconds later the rest of the escape pod slowly began fading into focus as well. Tom had told her this was normal, that the higher a creature or object’s sentience the larger an impression it left in the Force, similar to gravity’s effect on local spacetime. That Nita understood well enough, though she never got around to asking how an object could be sentient, but right now that was the least of her worries.

“One common theme in many Force-sensitive societies, and the Jedi especially, is the dual nature of the Force,” Tom had said just after they had left Wellakh, “Dark and Light, Living and Cosmic. The Living Force, that’s what allows the echolocation effect you felt earlier. It’s present in all living things, even those that conventional science wouldn’t view as such, and it binds the entire universe together in the here and now.”

“Is there a point to this?” Carmela had interrupted, prompting a sharp look from Kit.

“I’m getting to it,” Tom had said, “The flip side to the Living Force is the Cosmic Force. In its everyday uses, it gives the Jedi our ‘danger sense,’ allowing us to detect threats before they occur, such as you did with the remote droid. In its more abstract applications… well, it’s the origin of our infamous Jedi mysticism.”

Nita remembered how he had paused, a slightly wry smile on his face, not even a second before Carmela had muttered, “All a bunch of mumbo jumbo, anyway.” Nita couldn’t quite convince herself that Tom’s timing had been purely coincidental, and judging by the fleeting expression that had passed across Carmela’s eyes, she couldn’t either.

“So,” Kit had said, also glancing in Carmela’s direction, “You’re saying Jedi really _can_ see the future?”

Tom had nodded. “And so much more. The Force exists not only on our plane of existence, but in Timeheart as well, and that’s especially true for the Cosmic Force. It binds the past to the future; it governs destiny and Temporal Shatterpoint Theory; it’s the closest many of us will ever get to knowing the Powers that Be, in this lifetime at least. It is, quite possibly, one of the most difficult aspects of the Force to understand or master, even for the most experienced Jedi.”

And Tom was relying on her to use it to somehow predict the best place for them to board the _Starsnuffer._ The enormous, deadly, planet-sized, _literal star destroyer,_ run by a being essentially possessed by the devil himself. And Nita still had no idea how she had deflected those blaster bolts on the _Falcon_ , or even, really, what had happened.

Suddenly, Nita felt very sick.

 _No! No panicking. No being sick,_ she practically shouted at herself, _Absolutely_ no _being sick all over Tom and Kit. It was humiliating enough when you did it on Joanne that one time, and nobody was counting on you to not get everyone killed then!_

Which was, of course, precisely the point. Now she remembered how foolishly she had hoped that it would all look easier after a few refreshing hours of sleep, as if this was just some math test that she’d forgotten to study for. Instead, her dreams had been plagued by dark, menacing figures commanding storms of lightning, and she had woken up feeling more anxious and unprepared than she had been before falling asleep, and more convinced than ever that she couldn’t predict the future any more than she could save Aunt Annie from the stormtroopers.

This time, the lump in her throat lodged itself firmly against her trachea and refused to budge, despite all her mental shouting. On second thought, this was exactly like her fights with Joanne, when without fail her crippling fear would morph into anger, and she would cross the line between only mostly useless and completely pathetic.

Nita breathed heavily as another wave of panic crashed over her, and she clenched her hand into a fist in her lap, trying helplessly to ride it out like she always used to do with Joanne. Back then, before Joanne and her gang had learned the hard way that messing with Nita also meant messing with her new friend Ronan, Aunt Annie had always been waiting at home with a cold icepack and a warm cup of tea, ready to soothe the pain away.

“Nita?” Tom whispered.

Her eyes flew open for a split second, blinking away hot, stinging tears. In her brief flashes of vision between blinks, she saw Tom turned to face her with his arm still outstretched. She watched him open his mouth to speak again, his eyes filled with worry.

And then, suddenly it wasn’t Tom’s arm framed against the pale durasteel of the wall, but another’s, clad all in black with the fingers splayed stiff. Whatever Tom said was swallowed by this other figure, the one Nita had seen in her dream, who scorched the very air around itself with its built up static charge. And Nita knew with absolute certainty, just as she had in the dream, that if she didn’t do something now— _quick, anything_ —the lightning would burst from those fingers again, and everything and everyone would burn.

And then she blinked again, and it was only Tom sitting there in the cramped little pod, looking more worried than ever.

“Nita, are you alright? What’s wrong?” Tom asked. His right hand was lowered now, and with his left he reached out to take her by the shoulder.

Nita couldn’t trust herself to speak, only shake her head. She tried wrapping her arms around herself to stop the violent shivers running through her entire body, but it did nothing to help. Her eyes were stinging now not with tears but from staying open too wide, fixed on a tiny point on the back of Carmela’s chair. She almost didn’t dare look back at Tom out of some senseless fear that she would see that figure from her dream staring back.

 _What is_ wrong _with me?_ she screamed in her head, _It was just a stupid dream. What am I, five? A kreffing_ dream! _Nita, you idiot, you’re not going to last ten minutes down there if you can’t handle a_ kreffing bad dream. _God, what am I doing here?_

She wanted nothing more right now than for all of these past few days to have been the dream, so she could wake up at home to the smell of horses and Aunt Annie’s breakfast and then have a good laugh about how absurd it all sounded in the clear light of day.

“I can’t,” she croaked, still numbly shaking her head, “I can’t do it. I can’t.”

“Oh, _Nita._ ” Tom moved his hand to her other shoulder and hugged her close. “That’s okay. Don’t worry; you’re going to be okay. It’s my fault for expecting so much of you so soon.” She felt Tom’s head shift, and he gestured to someplace past the viewport. There was a second’s pause. “Yes, right there. A little to starboard. That’s it.”

Only when she felt the escape pod change course underneath her did she realize Tom had told Carmela where to land.

This time she didn’t cry, though part of her wanted to. She suspected her tears were all dried up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have figured it out. All the bits where Nita is feeling especially helpless are all the bits I have _the woooorst_ time writing. It's so hard trying to put myself in an itty-bitty-Nita-who's-never-had-to-face-any-of-this-before frame of mind after reading the newer books with an older, badass Nita who's not afraid to trash talk a pissed off alien princess to her face. (Although, in itty-bitty-Nita's defense, how well do you think _you_ would cope in her situation?) But don’t worry, this is the last time she’s going to break down like that.
> 
> And speaking of future!Nita, the further this story progresses, the more I might start incorporating things from the expanded star wars universe that might not be immediately recognizable to the movie fans, and here’s where that first starts cropping up.
> 
> The [Living Force](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Living_Force/Legends) and [Cosmic Force](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cosmic_Force/Legends) pop up in Legends occasionally, frequently in relation to Qui-Gon Jinn, but the way I’ve simplified it here is basically: Living Force = Nita and Kit’s initial specialties (with Dairine as a weird variation that can sense droids, which is A Big Deal in star wars) and Cosmic Force = Nita’s new specialty aka Force visions.
> 
> [Shatterpoints](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Shatterpoint), which Tom briefly mentioned in his little speech, are relevant only due to their connection to [Mace Windu](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mace_Windu/Legends), who… well, I’m not going to give you all the answers now, am I? Let’s just say something of his is going to play a role much later on.
> 
> (And I haven’t even touched on Tython yet!)
> 
> (Also, Carl’s crazy escapade is, of course, a reference to Kit’s favorite series in WoM, wherein the main character does indeed escape an army of hostile green Martians along with a thoat and the Burroughs equivalent of DD’s pet scorpions.)


	16. Form IV: Ataru

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There was a thermonuclear furnace where his heart should be, and it was burning through the firewalls of his Jedi training. He held the Force in the clench of a white-hot fist. He was half Sith already, and he didn’t even know it.  
> This boy had the gift of fury."  
> —the Sith Lord Count Dooku, referring to Anakin Skywalker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I could say the next chapter is going to come out on a reasonable schedule, but it's That Time of Year again, and this time around that means going off to college. So, unless some miracle happens, expect more super long gaps between chapters while I attempt to BS my way into becoming a functional human being. Sorry guys :(

Roshaun and Dairine pressed themselves flat against the wall near the end of a T-junction, just before their hallway met up with another. A second later, Carl fell back against the wall beside them. Dairine shot him a sideways glance. The Jedi Master had done a good job hiding the effects of Darth Vader’s “interrogation” in front of the Imperials, but Dairine’s high-energy escape clearly took a lot out of him. Now, some of his earlier exhaustion could be seen poking through the cracks in his composure. He leaned on the wall as much for support as he did to keep out of sight of any patrolling stormtroopers, and his heavy breathing was a far cry from a Jedi’s usual stamina.

 _If we don’t get out of here soon, I’m scared he might collapse,_ Dairine thought, unwilling to imagine what would happen to them if he did.

 _I was thinking the same thing,_ Roshaun said. Since he spoke directly into her mind, she didn’t have any trouble hearing him over the alarm that had been blaring ever since they left the second turbolift.

Dairine blinked. _You’re overhearing my thoughts again._

 _Yes, and let’s save the implications of that for some time when we’re not trying to escape from a space station that none of our best spies have ever escaped from. For now…_ Roshaun sank into the Force to mentally peer around the corner, and through her connection with him, Dairine saw what he saw. On either side of a wide door across the hallway and ten meters to their right, two stormtroopers stood guard, fully alert with the klaxons ringing in their ears.

 _Just two?_ Carl asked. Dairine hadn’t realized he was paying attention. _There should be another one. That’s how we always did it on the bigger stations._

 _Maybe they’ve downsized since the Empire took over,_ Dairine suggested. Even so, they approached the situation with renewed caution.

 _I’ll take the helmets,_ Roshaun said, _That way they can’t call for backup._

 _It would be faster just to knock their heads together really hard,_ Dairine said.

_If that didn’t work on the first try, we’d have a lot more than two guards to worry about._

Dairine scowled and immediately snapped, _Are you saying you don’t trust me?_

_I’m saying—_

A sudden mental shove shut both of them up. _If you two would actually_ do _something_ _instead of standing here bickering,_ Carl said, _we’d be inside the armory by now._

The Wellakhit stiffened for a moment, neither of them willing to concede their argument. Then Dairine sighed. She’d noticed this happening with increasing frequency as of late; one or both of them would jump down the other’s throat at the first sign of him or her saying something halfway reasonable, each more concerned with their injured pride than listening to what the other had to say. When they had been younger they never had this problem, mainly because they hadn’t known each other well enough to form the habit, and the low-level animosity they’d held for each other hadn’t yet had the backing of history to let it flare up like this.

In a palace as large as the Sunplace, it was remarkably easy to never run into the only other young person in residence, especially when that person was often busy learning all he needed to know as the Throne-destined. Apparently, Nelaid and Miril had been desperate for Roshaun and Dairine to get along, back when Dairine was just a toddler and Roshaun was the Wellakhit equivalent of ten years old, so the two of them would have someone closer to their own age to relate to when Dairine grew older. That had, according to everybody who dared speak about the incident, culminated in one memorable night when Dairine woke up half the palace with her angry screaming, Roshaun locked himself in a closet and refused to come out until the next morning, and in all the confusion Carl came to the erroneous conclusion that someone had tried to assassinate them both.

After that, the adults had decided it was better if Dairine and Roshaun didn’t spend a lot of time together. It was only in this past year that that had changed, now that Carl had finally convinced Nelaid to let him train Dairine as a Jedi. Everyone, including Dairine and Roshaun, had hoped that having the Force in common would help smooth over their hostility towards each other. And in some ways it had, but in other ways it simply added more fuel to the fire. Dairine wanted to blame some of that on the fact that, relatively speaking, they were now closer in age, but even she couldn’t deny it was their own fierce competitiveness that lay at the root of this problem.

This time, she decided to blame it on the emergency siren still screaming in her ears, putting her on edge.

 _Sorry,_ she said to both Carl and Roshaun, with more sincerity than she’d expected. _We’ll go with your plan, Ro._

With that said, they made short work of the two guards. Roshaun yanked their helmets into the air, Dairine crashed their newly unprotected skulls into each other, and they collapsed on the floor. They quickly checked to make sure there weren’t any other stormtroopers in the area, before running around the corner to the armory door. Dairine kept an eye on Carl, but other than a somewhat glazed-over look in his eyes, he seemed to be holding up alright. He gave her an admonishing look when he caught her staring, but said nothing.

 _Uh-oh. He’s_ real _pissed off,_ Dairine thought to herself as she placed her hand on the keypad set into the wall beside the door and dug around inside the electronic lock’s memory for the right combination.

“So,” she said, keeping her voice purposefully light, “no angry speech about why I’m not supposed to be here, and I’m recklessly endangering myself, and you don’t need me to rescue you?”

“I figure you’ll get plenty of that from Nelaid when you get back,” Carl said, “Right now I’m more interested in knowing _how_ you got here, and whether or not we can use that for our escape.” His expression matched Dairine’s voice, but his reproachful tone told her how much he’d really like to give her that angry speech right now, if it weren’t so inappropriate a time to do so.

“Speak for yourself,” Roshaun said, shooting Dairine a glare over the floating, unconscious bodies of the stormtroopers, who Roshaun was levitating away from the door. “ _I’ll_ yell at her for recklessly endangering herself.”

“You already did,” Dairine said.

“I feel I’m entitled to a second time.”

“You feel you’re _entitled_ to a lot of things, you arrogant, moof-milking son of a bantha poodoo kriffing pfassk…” Dairine muttered under her breath

“Again, is now really the time?” Carl said.

“I’d like to point out that, whatever I should have done, I did _rescue you_ , so a little gratitude would be great,” Dairine snapped at Roshaun.

Before Roshaun could spit anything back at her, the keypad Dairine still had her hand on beeped, and the blast door swooshed open between them. All three of them fell silent, examining the opening with more senses than just the standard five, feeling for any immediate danger. When nothing came up, they entered the armory, still creeping cautiously in case all the dark side energy saturating the space station clouded their danger sense.

As another part of the band around the middle of the _Starsnuffer,_ the armory was built similarly to the hangar: wide and impossibly long. Off to the left, rack upon rack of weaponry stretched as far as the eye could see, while to the right an enormous set of closed blast doors were set into the wall leading, no doubt, into the hangar. Directly in front of them, about fifty AT-ATs and AT-STs stood in rows, waiting to march through the blast doors. They were so much more intimidating up close than Dairine expected. In the Alliance reports, she’d always been struck by how absurd the walkers looked, but holo images could never capture the sheer size of these machines that towered over her now.

 _What purpose could walkers serve on a space station?_ Roshaun asked, switching back to silent communication, _It isn’t as if they could land them anywhere._

 _You’re forgetting this station has a built-in worldgate generator. Depending on the accuracy, it might be able to beam them directly onto a planet’s surface. Or, more likely, they’re just loaded onto Star Destroyers,_ Carl said. He stood in front of the nearest AT-ST with his eyes closed, searching the armory in the Force. Roshaun and Dairine stared at him in confusion.

 _‘Beam?’ You’ve been watching too many of those old sci-fi holos again._ Dairine laughed inwardly. Then she looked around again, realizing something that, in their rush to get here, she hadn’t thought to ask. _Why did we need to come in here anyway?_

Instead of answering, Carl looked up, opened his eyes, and walked straight to a crate next to the doors of the hangar. He opened it, and a tired but triumphant grin spread across his face. _Back in the Republic, we used to store anything we confiscated from prisoners in the armory, mainly for convenience._ He pulled out a short, cylindrical item of a utilitarian design and waved it in the air. _Looks like that much hasn’t changed._

Dairine’s heart leapt at the sight of Carl’s lightsaber, and she ran immediately over to where he crouched. She knelt down beside him as he clipped his lightsaber to his belt. Her eyes were instantly drawn to her own sleeker, shinier lightsaber, sitting in the crate alongside Carl’s blaster, which until recently he’d used more often than his lightsaber, and Roshaun’s blaster and vibroknife, both easily concealable under his loose clothing.

Just as she reached into the crate, her fingers a centimeter from curling around her lightsaber, she sensed it: a warning in the Force itching at the back of her mind. She twisted around, shouting louder than the klaxons, “Ro, look out!”

But Roshaun had felt the attack as well. He spun toward the racks of weapons beyond the AT-ATs, twisting out of the way just before a green laser bolt shot past his head. His hand shot up, and there was a flash of yellow light and a loud _bang,_ before a white armored shape slumped out of his hiding place.

 _There’s your third stormtrooper,_ Roshaun said, while, not for the first time, Dairine made herself a mental note to have him teach her that trick later.

 _And he’s probably called his friends,_ Carl said, _We need to hurry._ He grabbed his blaster and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, while Dairine tossed Roshaun his things.

 _Wait,_ Dairine said, finally voicing what she had sworn to do on the observation deck. She quickly returned her own lightsaber to its clip and stood up as well, crossing her arms. _I’m not leaving this place until that worldgate generator is destroyed._

Roshaun moved to stand beside her, mirroring her body language. _Neither will I. As a Guarantor, I cannot in good conscience allow this…_ monstrosity _to continue to exist. Not while it threatens Wellakh._

For a moment Carl stood there staring at them with the strangest expression on his face: a mixture of wonder and confirmation, strength and weariness, despair and pride. Then his mouth twitched into a sad, tired smile. _We’re not leaving,_ he said, _Not yet at least. The generator’s controls aren’t going to be on the bridge; they’d need a separate control room to house it all, and I don’t know where that would be. But up those stairs—_ he pointed to a winding staircase on the nearer side of the blast doors that Dairine hadn’t noticed at first in the face of all the AT-ATs. It led high up to a small door near the ceiling of the armory— _I’m guessing should be some sort of monitoring station or command center for the hangar. If we can get into a terminal there, we should be able to find a map._

Roshaun nodded in acceptance and uncrossed his arms, but Dairine just cocked one eyebrow at Carl. _You’re ‘guessing?’_

 _And putting my faith in the Force,_ Carl said with the slightest hint of reprimand in his tone, _Now come on, before that stormtrooper’s backup get here._

With only a brief glance between each other, the two Wellakhit fell into place on either side of Carl. Dairine quickly hopped onto the stairs in front of him before he could reach the staircase, and Roshaun took up the rear. Carl shot Dairine a sharp look again, and she thought for a second he would protest it this time, but his relief at getting them to back down won out.

That in itself was a little concerning. Either Carl was a lot more worn out than even she could tell, or something else was going on, because the professional worrier she knew would never feel _relieved_ to bring them into a potentially deadly situation. _Something tells me this conversation isn’t over yet,_ she thought to herself.

 _You never did say how you got here,_ Roshaun mentioned as he followed Carl up, _and I’ve been waiting longer than Carl has._

 _Ha ha, very funny,_ Dairine snarked, rounding the first switchback in the staircase, _Spot listened in on the encrypted comm channel after the first reports of your attack came in. It managed to get the Star Destroyer’s hyperspace vector from the convoy ship, then plotted all the most likely paths along that vector. Turned out there was a huge asteroid field in the middle of one that they’d have to go through in realspace, so I—er—borrowed an X-Wing and got there before them. Jumped onto the short-range comm channels to get into their computer system, then tricked the sensors into thinking I was a TIE._

 _Nice._ Roshaun grinned, and just like that everything was back to normal between the two of them. Or what passed for normal, at least.

Between peals of the emergency siren, Dairine heard Carl’s footsteps slow, and she quickly turned around. But instead of, as she’d feared earlier, being on the verge of collapse, Carl looked like a metaphorical lightbulb had just gone off in his head.

 _Dair,_ you can talk to machines, Carl exclaimed, _Powers in a bucket, I’m an idiot!_

Dairine shot a somewhat alarmed glance over his shoulder at Roshaun, wondering if her initial assessment of the situation was closer to the mark, and Carl was beginning to crack. _Yeah… Of course I can,_ she said slowly. Then she and Roshaun’s faces both lit up with sudden understanding.

 _Don’t you get it? I—we might not need to go anywhere to disable the generator,_ Carl said, _If you can remotely slice into its control systems…_

 _We could do everything from up here!_ Dairine cried, _I’ll bet there’s even a door leading straight into the hangar that we can use when we’re done. We might actually have a shot at surviving this!_

Abruptly, Carl’s thoughts grew serious again, though the hopeful spark didn’t leave his eye. _We’ll have to hurry, though. Those stormtroopers will get here any minute now._

They rushed up the rest of the stairs at twice their previous speed, until they reached a cramped landing and the door to the command center, about ten feet below the ceiling. Dairine and Roshaun silently took up positions on either side of the door: Dairine gripping her lightsaber with both hands, Roshaun with his blaster at the ready and his left hand poised for telekinetic attack. Carl slid into a similar stance behind Roshaun.

 _Careful now,_ he warned, _The room’s full of people. Tech workers, mostly, and some officers, but still armed and still deadly._

Dairine nodded and reached out in front of her through the Force, trying to gauge how many were inside. She could sense an estimation of at least forty people in the long, sunken crew pits inside, manning control consoles and sensor readouts, and she sensed even more on a second balcony floor, where they would have the advantage of higher ground. All of them were alert, listening to the siren wail, ready to defend the command center at a moment’s notice.

She remembered how easy she’d assumed this would be only a moment ago. Now, she was having second thoughts. She had only fought such a large group three times before, and on none of those occasions had she come out on top, exactly. The first was on her Ordeal, when the Lone One’s agents had chased her through the Crossings, but she’d had a blaster then, not a lightsaber, and most of her time had been spent fleeing instead of attacking. The second time hardly counted, since she’d been training, and by the end Dairine had been frustrated enough to fantasize about simply shutting down the brains of Carl’s volunteer guardsmen for a few minutes, like misbehaving droids.

And most recently was two days ago, when the stormtroopers had captured her. (Or was it three days now? She could hardly keep track of time even when she had Thahit above her to use as a guide.) Even her preferred lightsaber form was better suited to one-on-one combat than melee attacks.

Roshaun caught her eye, and she knew he was thinking the same thing. Guarantors were taught to defend against single or small groups of people; assassination attempts didn’t usually come in crowds. Of the three of them, only Carl had any experience with this kind of fighting, and in his present condition they couldn’t expect him to carry the brunt of the attack. But they all knew this was their best chance if they wanted to make it out alive. _Better to face forty noncombatants now than forty stormtroopers in a minute,_ Dairine thought to herself.

Roshaun started a quick countdown, and when he reached zero he waved the door open. He and Dairine immediately leapt into the room, followed closely by Carl, and Roshaun was able to get two shots in before the Imperials’ shock wore off, and they started firing back.

It was just as Dairine feared. Blaster bolts flew all around them, turning the air thick with lasers and nearly drowning out the sirens. Dairine had to use all her concentration just to avoid getting hit; she could hardly begin to think about hitting back. Wordlessly communicating, she formed a back-to-back triangle with Roshaun and Carl and tried to push their way into the center of the room, hoping to force the Imperials to risk shooting each other if they missed, but it seemed as though every step they took forward turned into a leap back as they dodged more blaster bolts.

Roshaun, like Dairine, had to focus on avoiding attacks, except he used a secret Guarantor technique of knocking aside blaster bolts with gusts of Force: another skill Dairine was bound and determined to learn for herself. Only occasionally could he fire a returning shot, either with his own blaster or with more mysterious flashes of light. Alone out of the three of them, leading their assault despite his fatigue, Carl managed to consistently take out their attackers with his deflected blaster bolts.

 _This is never going to work,_ Dairine realized, as a sour knot settled in her stomach. _They outgun us. We can’t win. And then Vader will… Wellakh…_

_No. I refuse to let that happen._

Her dread disappeared in an eruption of white-hot fury, an uncontrollable rage that lashed out of her like a coronal mass ejection. Every Imperial within ten feet of her was thrown off their feet, and Roshaun and Carl both whirled around to stare at her. But even that wouldn’t be enough. Within moments, more Imperials were closing in around then.

Dairine didn’t care anymore. She knew what she had to do.

Drawing on all the power of the Force that she could muster and channeling it into her words, she shouted, “ _EVERYBODY STOP!”_

Instantly, the entire room fell still. The emergency siren suddenly seemed deafening with the absence of all other sounds, but Dairine barely heard it.

 _“Dairine!”_ Carl hissed, grabbing her by the arm.

“Not now.” She snatched her arm away, and Carl fell silent as well, though she knew it was shock, not the influence of her Force-backed order, that caused him to back off. Addressing the Imperials again, she continued. “ _You will all put away your blasters and leave, immediately. None of you will alert anyone to our presence here, and none of you will attempt to harm us again for as long as we remain on this space station. In fact,”_ she added, throwing additional power into her last command, not even sure if it would work, “ _No Imperial agent will enter this room for the same duration of time.”_

Silently, she, Carl, and Roshaun watched as each and every grey-suited Imperial left the command center. They offered no objection; they simply filed out through a wide door that opened straight into the hallway.

Dairine made it until the door had shut behind the last Imperial officer before she staggered into Roshaun’s side, feeling like she’d just been stomped on by one of the AT-ATs after the enormous drain on her energy. Roshaun took a reflexive step back, with awe and more than a little fear written on his face.

“How did you…” he breathed.

“Never mind _how_ you did that,” Carl said, his voice deadly, “Dairine, _what were you thinking?”_

Dairine couldn’t look him in the eye, and not only because she’d sunk halfway to a crouch with her hands shaking on her knees.

“Jedi _never_ tamper with a sentient being’s mind, no matter how justified you think you are,” Carl continued, even quieter now, and harsher, “It’s the Troptic Stipulation; it’s _right there_ in the Oath. How could you even consider doing that?”

She couldn’t tell him about her urge to do something similar during that training session, or about the barely contained thermonuclear furnace that lived in her heart. She could only stand there trembling, watching the floor swim in and out of darkness in front of her eyes.

“Carl…” Roshaun said softly, but with the authority of a prince, “Enough. She knows.”

 _I did what I had to,_ she wanted to say. But the words wouldn’t come out.

Carl took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Roshaun is right. This can wait until… until later. When we’re out of here. Can you stand?” he asked more gently.

Dairine nodded, pushing herself upright again. “I’ll get to the computer,” she gasped.

Carl nodded, still warring between frustration and concern for her, before he gingerly dropped into the nearby crew pit. As Dairine passed Roshaun on her way to the line of computers along the wall, she sensed wariness clouding Roshaun’s thoughts, and when she tried to reach further in order to say something to him, anything, his mind was closed off to her.

“What are you doing?” Roshaun turned away from her and asked Carl. The Jedi had accessed a computer console of his own and was rapidly flipping switches and pushing buttons that meant nothing to either Dairine or Roshaun.

“This is the control for the tractor beams. I need to switch them off before we leave,” he said, his eyes flickering over the screen. “Stang!”

“What’s wrong?” Roshaun asked.

“It needs an emergency override password since we set off the alarm,” Carl muttered, “Forgot about that. Dairine, when you’re done, could you come over here and slice this for me?”

“Yeah. But I might be a minute,” she said through gritted teeth as she dug through her computer’s files and software, searching for anything related to the worldgate generator.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him nod and glance anxiously at the door they had entered through, no doubt checking to see if the stormtroopers had made their way to the armory yet. Then his gaze shifted to the viewport in front of him. “I might need you to do the same for the docking bay doors, to keep them locked open.”

“Sure thing,” she said. For the first time she allowed herself to really look at the room around her. One long wall was taken up entirely by the viewport, looking down onto the hangar, but what was strange was how its stifling absence of color had been replaced by an eerie red glow that washed over everything, including the giant Star Destroyer they’d been held on, directly below them in the hangar. The source of that glow could be seen right above them: the hangar’s ray shield, stretching out across the trench like a florescent ceiling. It split the monitor station in half, so that the balcony floor looked out over it, and the floor the three rebels were on was underneath it.

When Dairine and Roshaun had been led out of the Star Destroyer, the tech workers had already closed the enormous docking bay doors, so the ray shield had been off. If it was on now, that meant they must have brought another ship in recently. But why?

Roshaun was clearly following the same line of thought, because he walked closer to the viewport in order to see around the far end of the command center, which only stretched less than a quarter of the length of the hanger itself, though Dairine guessed there were other stations further along the hangar.

“What do you see?” she asked, only half paying attention as she continued probing the computer systems for more than a passing reference to the worldgate generator. So far she hadn’t had any luck, and her patience was wearing thin.

“There is a ship pulling in on a tractor beam just beyond this command center,” he said, looking regel even as he craned his neck, “It’s small—some sort of cargo ship, I believe, though it looks so decrepit that I wouldn’t trust it to freight anything intra-system, let alone through hyperspace.”

“Probably a smuggler’s ship then, or a pirate’s,” Carl suggested, joining Roshaun by the viewport, “that wandered close enough to the station that the Imperials feel the need to eliminate it as a witness.” He frowned suddenly, with a curiously distant look in his eyes.

“You sensing something?” Dairine asked. She kept an eye on her hand covering the computer bank, not that it did any good.

“I’m not sure. It’s hard to get a clear reading in someplace so steeped in the dark side,” Carl said, “No, I was thinking that would be a good ship to make a getaway in.”

“You’re joking,” Roshaun said, “Look at it! It would break apart during the jump to lightspeed.”

“That sort of Corellian design isn’t pretty, but it’s built to last. It’ll get us out of here, probably faster than one of those Imperial shuttles I was planning on using,” Carl said, “We might even be able to save a few hapless smugglers in the meantime.”

“I thought Jedi were meant to uphold the law, not encourage its subversion,” Roshaun said in a feeble last attempt to appeal to reason.

“You do realize I help run a highly treasonous organization whose entire purpose is to subvert the law, right?” Carl raised his eyebrows. Dairine snickered, and he turned to look at her, no doubt remembering what would happen to them and their highly treasonous organization if they stayed here too long. At once, his earlier weariness, which he’d pushed aside when he took charge, threatened to return. “Are you getting anywhere with that?” he asked her, walking back towards her station while Roshaun followed.

“No,” she spat, smacking her palm against the computer as her frustration got the better of her again, “This kriffing useless piece of junk won’t let me find the worldgate controls. I think they might run that all on a completely independent server, so no one can slice into it.”

Carl nodded, ignoring her little outburst, and Roshaun said the first curse word Dairine had ever heard him say. “Well, we’re back to plan A, then,” Carl said grimly, “Pull up a map to the worldgate control center.”

As Dairine did so, she muttered, “If I had Spot with me, I might be able to do more.” Not for the first time, she wished she’d had the sense to copy Spot before she sent it off.

“I… was meaning to ask,” Carl said, as if reluctant to hear the answer, “Where is Spot? I hoped it would be with our weapons.”

“Oh, didn’t I say?” Dairine began. As she did so, she pointed at the computer monitor, which now showed a detailed route to where they needed to go. Carl leaned in to examine it. “That asteroid field was just past Ireland.”

Carl froze.

“You told me if there was ever an emergency, to send word to Tom Swale, and… well, we were right there. Plus I’d just downloaded all the Star Destroyer’s files onto Spot, and I really needed to get that back to the Alliance, so I stuck Spot in an escape pod and told it to reroute its power to the engine so the pod would make it all the way to the planet.”

Slowly, Carl’s expression relaxed, softening into the beginnings of a smile. And then he blanched.

“He’s taken the droid to Wellakh,” he said. It wasn’t a question; it was a realization of what that meant.

“…Oh.”

Somehow, along every step of the way, every time Dairine tried to fix things she managed to consistently make everything that much worse. Now not only would Wellakh be destroyed if they didn’t succeed in disabling the _Starsnuffer,_ but Master Swale and Spot would as well, acting on Dairine’s instructions. And then the Alliance would lose half of its leadership and most of its funding, and it would never receive Spot’s data, and Darth Vader would go on another, even more terrible genocidal spree across the galaxy, and the entire rebellion would collapse. All because Dairine, wannabe Jedi rebel, had blundered in where she shouldn’t have interfered.

“Right,” Carl said. His face hardened, and he drew himself up to his full height. Dairine had no idea where he kept finding his energy. She knew _she_ was exhausted after clearing out the command center, so Carl had to be nearly spent. Yet, now it barely showed. “Right,” he said again, “I’m changing the plan; Dairine, you take care of things here, and then you both get on that ship and fly as far away as you can. Don’t go to Wellakh. Don’t go to any rebel planet. Just fly. I’ll stay here and take care of the worldgate.”

Immediately, Dairine and Roshaun began shouting over each other, fighting Carl’s decision with all their might.

“Both of you, _shut up!”_ Carl snapped. Surprisingly, they did. Dairine couldn’t remember a single time Carl had lost his temper with them, and even though she knew he wasn’t mad at her, but instead angry and terrified of what might happen, it still shocked her into silence. “Think this through; neither of you can defend well against blaster bolts. You’d be shot to pieces before we ever made it. And Dairine, you’re shaking all over. You’ve drained all your energy with that reckless trick you pulled, and most importantly, you don’t know the first thing about worldgates between the two of you.”

“I know some!” Dairine protested, while at the same time, Roshaun shouted, “It is my duty to protect Wellakh.”

“Can either of honestly tell me, in detail, what phase manipulation does to a hyperstring matrix?” Carl said, “Or how to use it to align two hyperstructures in such a way as to only render the exocytic matrix of an active transport gate inoperable, then anchor the endocytic locus slightly out of phase within the gravity well of a dead star and send it rotating in extradimensional space so as to create a time delay before the gate becomes patent, attempts to suck everything in its vicinity down its conduit, overloads, and then, rather than spitting it all back out as a natural worldgate would do, dumps its entire contents at its remote origin point, instantly destroying this entire space station.”

Again, only the blaring of the siren could be heard for the next long moments as Dairine and Roshaun stared blankly at him. Carl gave a deep sigh, looking for a moment just as weary as he had when the stormtroopers had hauled him in front of Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader. “I’m sorry,” he said, dragging his hand down his face, “I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

As if on cue, the two Wellakhit started talking simultaneously again.

“At least let us help with the fighting!”

“I still feel honor bound to assist in some way.”

“Again, I’m sorry,” Carl said, “But neither of you are proficient in this sort of combat, whereas it’s my specialty exactly. No—” He held up his hand when it looked like they would argue again. “There’s no need to worry about me. I’ve faced worse odds before and succeeded. I told you the story about the Barsoomian scorpion, right?”

Dairine managed a tiny smile, and Roshaun stood stoically beside her.

“The important thing right now is that you two live to continue fighting for all that is good in the galaxy,” Carl said, with a smile that matched Dairine’s before it curved into a frown. “But in case… in case I _don’t_ make it back…”

Dairine subconsciously began shaking her head, unwilling to even consider the possibility.

“Tell Nelaid that…” Carl paused again, searching for the right thing to say, “that all this deceit would break Betty’s heart. And tell him it’s time.” He gave another heavy sigh and looked Dairine straight in the eye. “And after that, just know that I am deeply sorry.”

She nodded, not even beginning to comprehend, but knowing if she asked him to explain, her voice would only come out in a squeak.

With a tiny, reorienting shake of his head, Carl was all business again. “So. Tractor beams, hangar doors, dubiously legal rust bucket. I’ll be right behind you in a shuttle.” Dairine and Roshaun nodded curtly, and as Carl backed up toward the same door the Imperials had left through he shot them a tight smile. “May the Force be with you.”

“And may the Force be with you,” Dairine whispered.

He waved open the door and stepped through it, turning to face them one last time. “ _Dai stihó_ ,” he said. And with that, the door snapped shut, and he was gone.

 _Dai stihó_ was one of the few words remaining of the ancient language of the Force, lost to the original Jedi Order many thousands of years ago after the destruction of their homeworld, Tython. It was, according to legend, the language used by the Powers that Be to create the universe, but what little of it the Jedi had still known before the fall had long since lost its direct connection to the Force. Still, they had always been extremely careful about using the Speech. Power like that, to change the very structure of the universe, never completely faded away.

 _Dai stihó_ could mean goodbye for now. Or it could mean goodbye for forever.

“Dairine?” Roshaun said quietly. He took a step closer to her and placed a tentative hand on her shoulder. “We should get going.”

She nodded, still staring at the door. “Yeah,” she whispered. Then, stronger, “Yeah, let’s go.”

They made quick work of everything they needed to do in the monitor station. Within a minute of Carl leaving, they were creeping down another winding staircase into the hangar, projecting the most innocuous presence in the Force as they could manage, even though the rear of the Star Destroyer hid them from view.

Exactly thirteen seconds after the door closed behind them, a squad of stormtroopers entered the armory.

Eight seconds after that, a lightsaber cut into the hull above the command center.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My pulling from the Legends timeline (aka all the expanded universe stuff before Disney rebooted everything) for this chapter is mostly just tiny references and quotes. There’s the “thermonuclear furnace” quote up at the top, from the _Revenge of the Sith_ novelization by Mathew Stover (aka the book that makes you cry even more than the movie did), and that planet I mentioned and then said nothing about in the last chapter gets a name drop.
> 
> The chapter title comes from the form of lightsaber combat that Dairine favors, called [Ataru](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Form_IV/Legends). You know in Attack of the Clones when Yoda and Dooku square off, and Yoda's doing all those crazy flips and acrobatics? Yeah, that's like, Extreme Ataru. It's fast, it's aggressive, and it relies a lot on raw power despite also being used to compensate for its users' frequently smaller sizes. It's also best in duels with single opponents, which would appeal to the part of Dairine that's constantly making the fight me emoji at Vader. (Never underestimate how nerdy I can be. I got really bored one day and figured out what p much everybody's primary lightsaber forms would be. Carl does [Soresu](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Form_III/Legends) and [Shien/Djem So](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Form_V/Legends). Tom is more of a theoretical, researchy type ([Jedi Consula](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jedi_Consular)r), so his primary form is [Niman](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Form_VI/Legends). Roshaun doesn't have a lightsaber, so this doesn't apply to him, and Kit is probably going to be similar to Carl in his specialty, since those are the forms best suited for a bunch of blaster-wielding opponents. Okay, extreme nerd time is over now.)
> 
> There's one more subtle reference near the end of this chapter (not the return of the Burroughs joke), but if I point it out... spoilers. Still, if there's any Star Wars Rebels fans out there, see if you can spot it. :)


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